


a madness most discreet

by anelderling



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Outsiders (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics), Titans (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Bisexual Character, Disabled Character, Fluff and Angst, Forbidden Love, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Native American Character(s), Past Drug Addiction, Period Typical Attitudes, Pining, References to Depression, Romani Character, Trans Male Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-07-04 15:14:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 35,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15843903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anelderling/pseuds/anelderling
Summary: Summer, 1989. The cottage across from the villa has been let. Roy Harper is in town. / DickRoy. No Capes AU.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t even know how this got so long. It started out as a generic character exploration fic to see exactly how messed up Roy would be without Lian or the prospect of having Lian (the working title was actually “Manic Pixie Dream Roy”, because, I swear, Roy is a Marina and the Diamonds song come to life when he’s all issues), with what I thought would be nothing more than a half-assed plot inspired by the song [Rollercoaster](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcj0gnacT34) (of Love, Simon fame).
> 
> …And then it, um. Grew in the telling, I guess.
> 
> Don’t let the word count intimidate you, at its core, all this is ~~meant to be~~ is a character study of Roy. I hope it’s not a tedious read, and that you like it despite the length.
> 
> Your precautionary disclaimer that this is set in the 1980s, which means that some characters may say or do things that reflect the prejudices of their time. The opinions of the characters don’t represent the opinions of the author.

Dick has a good life. He knows this. He lives in a beautiful, sprawling villa in Southampton with a beautiful, sprawling family and friends he would never hesitate to die for. He has a quarter of a billion dollars to his name and has been told, repeatedly, that he has good looks, nature and character.

And when the colour of your skin says _untrustworthy_ to a lot of the world and your body is a lie you never chose to tell, but you can still lay claim to all of that – more, even – you can’t call life anything but the best. So Dick smiles a lot, laughs a lot, and never complains, because people with good lives have no right to.

He doesn’t complain when Bruce chooses Harvard for him. And on the flight home for his first summer back from college, he doesn’t even consider complaining once he touches down. What he does do is picture the scene that will welcome him at home, and he pictures it with the dull conviction that the reality of it wouldn’t even try to disappoint him.

He has a good life. He knows this.

He remembers, out of the blue, having read in a book or a journal or a magazine, _What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such._

It’s 1989, and it’s the end of history. Jason used to quote somebody – Yeats or Eliot, Dick thinks, but isn’t sure – about the end that would come, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

* * *

The relief hurts more than if someone had gutted him with a knife and then _twisted_ it. It’s in Alfred’s eyes when he picks Dick up at the airport, takes his bags with a firm _no, Master Richard, I insist._ It’s in the loud pattering of feet the instant he steps through the dark, looming cast-iron gates of home, which materialises into two ten-year-olds barrelling toward him, two little heads colliding with his stomach, two eager sets of arms wrapping around as much of him as they can reach. ( _Hey, Tim. Hey, Cassandra. I missed you, too._ )

It’s in the tall, imposing mahogany of the door to the study opening by a hair’s breadth, Bruce placing a hand on the receiver of the telephone and saying, under his breath, _Give me a minute_ – which is the first anyone has seen of him in days.

And Dick appreciates the warm welcome. He does. It feels good to be missed. Or it ought to.

But when Bruce comes outside for dinner – they’ve laid out a feast by the pool, and even Alfred isn’t eating alone, for once – there’s genuine, startled surprise in Tim’s face, and Cass beams in her quiet way, and Alfred’s eyes slide toward Dick for the briefest second, something close to gratitude in them.

Dick’s not hungry, all of a sudden.

“When did you say they were coming back, Alfred?” he asks. It must have been blurted out, out of the blue, but no one questions it. No one would. Dick means the new nanny and Damian, and they all know he’s nothing short of obsessed with the baby.

“Not long now, Master Richard.”

“Don’t hog Damian from Maxine too often this summer,” Bruce speaks up in his half-sardonic way. “We don’t want her to get bored and quit.”

Dick laughs. “I refuse to make that promise.”

A small smile pulls at one corner of Bruce’s lips. He needs more smile lines, Dick thinks. He needs to do that more often, and much less surreptitiously.

The thought feels like guilt.

When Maxine returns a moment after, Dick introduces himself, comments that Alfred has really outdone himself with the food, and takes Damian from her when she agrees to sit and eat. He’d worried that Damian wouldn’t recognise him at first – he’s fussy with strangers, tends to scream if they pick him up – but the instant he’s in Dick’s arms, he squeezes Dick’s face all over with his chubby little fingers. Dick presses his nose against his. “Missed you, kiddo.”

“The thing is,” he says. (Dick and Damian are alone on the porch, the one that faces the gates. Damian’s bushy eyebrows have always given him a serious look, so Dick tells him serious things. It feels like he understands.) “The thing is, it isn’t just relief. There’s an accusation in there, somewhere.” Dick pauses to let Damian grab at his finger and mouth it; he’s teething. “You know I didn’t want to leave.” But that’s a lie. “I didn’t have to leave.” True enough. Dick is the eldest and would inherit first, college degree or no college degree.

“It’s just.”

(There are six bedrooms in the villa: one for Bruce, one that Tim and Cassandra share, the temporary nursery that will be Damian’s room, someday, one for Dick, a spare for if Aunt Kate is in town or if Duke and Harper and Cullen get bored of Steph— and one that no one enters because it smells. It smells because no one enters. It still has a sheet of paper pasted across its door, incongruent with its luxurious surroundings, with faded, bold letters on it that read: JASON’S. DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT PERMISSION.)

“I had to leave,” Dick whispers.

* * *

“Bruce, who rented the Monte Cottage this year?” Dick asks over breakfast the next morning. Real estate on the Hamptons costs a certain amount that only a certain kind of people can afford. This means that they’re likely to – if not know, at least know _of_ – whoever is moving in for the summer.

It’s simple curiosity besides. The holiday cottage is right across from the villa, and belongs to friends of Bruce who rent it out for the summers for “extra income” that they don’t need. With the beach as its literal backyard, it’s fairly popular, and hasn’t spent a summer empty for as long as Dick can remember. Because he has a good view of the ocean from his bedroom window, he also has an excellent view of the front porch of the cottage. Dick wants to know what he can expect to see.

“Oliver Queen,” Bruce answers without looking up from the morning paper. Dick hums, intrigued. He’s heard of Oliver Queen. California royalty. Eccentric, judging from the news coverage. Like Bruce, he seems to have a penchant for taking orphans in.

Dick had been curious about Roy Harper as a child, had wondered, idly, how similar their experiences were. Except that had been when Roy was first adopted, at twelve years old, and Dick had been about ten himself, only a year into his new life. As he grew older, the scandalous headlines and gossip that travelled all the way to the opposite coast would convince him that they were nothing alike.

Bruce interrupts his thoughts, clearing his throat and setting his paper down. “Do you want to— we can take the boat out? After breakfast?” he asks, half of the sentence in Dick’s direction and the other half in Tim’s, who’s been quietly completing a jigsaw puzzle on the kitchen counter.

Dick’s heart sinks, and the crestfallen look on his face is no charade. “I’d love to, I mean it, I really would, it’s just that I promised to head down to Montauk to meet up with everyone… they’ve been expecting me for a while, I wrote Wally a week ago…” And it’s a shame, the _one_ time Bruce willingly suggests doing something not work-related together as a family. “But you and Tim can still go,” Dick suggests, hope in his voice. “You could even take Damian with Maxine? Maybe wait until Cass gets back from—”

“I understand. That’s alright.”

This means the plans have been tabled. Dick slides a nervous glance toward Tim, who’s retreated to his puzzle again. Is he hurt? Dick can’t tell. Possibly not – Tim and Cassandra are too young and new to remember _that_ Bruce, the one who did like to take the boat out often, almost every weekend, who agreed to camp on the beach and had more smile lines. Dick’s Bruce.

Jason’s Bruce.

You can’t miss what you never had, Dick reassures himself, but he spends some time with Tim after breakfast regardless.

He tells him about Lori, because that kind of talk would make Tim feel grown-up. He doesn’t tell him about Lucas, because that kind of talk, according to the world, would just be _too_ grown-up.

* * *

On the way to Montauk, Dick stops at a convenience shop to buy something small for the change he needs. That’s when he sees him. He would have caught Dick’s attention regardless, because he’s handsome in that unambiguously masculine way that no amount of reading _Gender Outlaw_ can make Dick less jealous of, but it still helps to pique his interest when he turns around after having paid for his purchases at the counter and Dick gets a good look at his jacket.

The jacket itself is nothing special, leather, probably, but Dick’s eyes are fixed on the badges. Some of them are harmless – band logos and anarchy symbols – but some of them are rainbows, pink triangles, or the words: ACT UP, BiPOL, HALF GAY, and whole sentences that Dick is too far to read.

His first thought: that takes guts. Might as well put a target on your back. It would have been a more common sight further down the East End, Fire Island, maybe, but here? People would talk.

His second thought: this stranger could pass for Wally’s brother. There are subtle differences – his close-cropped red hair is closer to proper ginger than Wally’s strawberry-blond, he has fewer freckles, the green of his eyes is sharper, brighter – but he could, easily. He’s bigger, though; Dick can tell that if he puts on more muscle, in a couple years he’d be twice Wally’s size. And he has piercings, at least three on one ear, plus one on his bottom lip that creates a tight crease right down the centre.

Dick returns his attention to the shelf in front of him, picking up a random candy bar.

When he looks up again, it’s pure chance that it happens right as the stranger lifts a pack of cigarettes and slips them into his pocket, his hands too quick for anyone else to have noticed.

Dick stares.

It must have been for a second too long, because those striking green eyes catch his. It’s too late to look away. Instead, Dick can only follow their gaze, up and then down and then up again, a helpless reflex more than intentional appraisal, Dick thinks, because it isn’t immediately followed by a leering grin.

At least not until a moment after, when the stranger’s eyes slide toward the bulge created by the pack of cigarettes in his pocket, almost in realisation, and then he gives Dick a dangerous grin, and places a finger against his lips in the universal gesture for quiet, and winks.

He steps past Dick, out the door. Just like that, he’s gone, taking the novelty of the moment with him.

* * *

“Roy Harper.”

Dick blinks, surprised. “Really?” he says. “I heard about Oliver Queen, but not—”

“No, it’s definitely true,” Wally answers with a sagely nod. “It turns out Barry’s friends with the guy, Oliver Queen, I mean, and he said. Roy Harper’s moving in, too.”

Their table goes silent in the way that means it’s a result of gossip just juicy enough to shock. The Hummingbird, the bar and grill by the docks that they’re currently in, has been their favourite haunt for as long as Dick can remember. It used to be just him and Wally and Donna and Garth whenever Garth isn’t in the hospital, then Dick had started going out with Kory, so she and her friends became a part of the team, too – Vic and Gar and Raven. And even when Kory had left Dick for Donna, the group stayed together. It helps that he and Kory are still friends, though Dick never understands when the fact shocks people. Kory’s a great woman, and he and Donna are two halves of the same soul, so it’s only natural that they’d fall for the same person.

It’s funny, Dick’s dated the daughter of the owner of the establishment, too, Babs – Barbara Gordon – but she’s never been one of them, for some reason, although they get along. She’s head over heels for their bartender, Dinah Lance, except she doesn’t know it. Sometimes Dick wants to yell it at her just so that she does something before Dinah gets snatched up. She’s gorgeous. She would in no time.

He asks the question on everyone’s mind: “Why do you think he’s moving in, too?”

“Well, there’s nothing weird about a family vacation,” says Donna, but she sounds sceptical. Kory, one arm around her girlfriend’s waist, wrinkles her nose as well.

“It’s weird if you’re older than eighteen and your other two siblings aren’t coming along.” Wally taps the table absently. “Wait, how old is he? Babs’ age?”

“Babs, how old are you?” Gar yells, leaning back on his chair so his head is closer to the table where Barbara is sitting alone, hunched over a spread-out newspaper.

“Shut-the-fuck-up-when-I’m-doing-the-crossword years old.”

“She’s twenty-one,” Dick obliges. “Just the two of them? Are you sure? I thought Oliver Queen was married.”

“Bonnie King divorced him, like, a year ago, Dick, keep up.” Donna rolls her eyes.

“I’m sorry that I don’t read gossip rags,” Dick counters, batting his eyelashes at her, sarcastic. She sticks her tongue out at him.

“Here’s my theory.” Wally leans in, and everyone unconsciously follows. “That bullshit in the papers about boarding school was a cover-up. Come on, all those crazy parties and the drinking and the drugs? He must have been sent to rehab. So Oliver makes him come along because he can’t be trusted on his own. See?”

“I can’t take it anymore.” Gar groans. “I’m throwing a party.”

Kory blinks. “What?”

“You heard me, gorgeous. A welcome home party for this guy.” He jabs his thumb in Dick’s general direction (Dick feels so loved, he thinks sarcastically). “And then Wally, if your uncle and this Queen guy are as chummy as you say, then _you_ can invite Roy Harper.”

“Why me!”

“The chummy thing! Come on, you’ll probably have dinner together or something soon, right?” Gar sighs. “We’re _all_ curious about this character, aren’t we?”

There are murmurs of agreement, so Wally caves and promises. Dick has to admit that the idea of it lifts the ennui for a moment. He’ll finally have a face to attach to the name.

* * *

“I want to see Garth,” Dick says after lunch, so they go to see Garth, him and Donna and Wally. The days of hospitalisation seem to outlast the days of remission now. They don’t talk about it.

“You’re back.” Despite looking like death warmed over, Garth beams from his bed. Dick gives him a hug that’s a little too tight.

“Your hands…”

Garth slips the swollen fingers under his sheets and says, “Tell me about Boston,” and Dick swallows away the lump in his throat and smiles and nods and obliges.

(“What does it feel like,” Dick had asked him once, younger and less conscious of being blunt about these things, “Knowing that you’re dying?” – and Garth had only shrugged. Said, “What does it feel like, pretending that you’re not?”)

* * *

He watches them arrive, later that night, but it’s too dark outside to be able to make out distinct faces when the cottage is surrounded by cars and movers’ vans. Damian shrieks from the next room, suddenly, and Dick rushes inside to go find him.

* * *

Gar wastes no time with the party – it’s set for the following night. “What did you expect?” Gar had said to Dick on the phone. “If it’s a welcome home party for you, it would be weird to throw it, like, a week after you got back or something, right?”

With that kind of timeframe, Dick doubts that Wally can keep his promise, but when he calls him, Wally proves Dick wrong.

“I didn’t even have to ask,” Wally says. “Oliver wanted me to show him around. Also I heard him telling Barry— something along the lines of Roy needing _good kids_ like me for friends? That’s a point for my rehab theory, huh?”

“What’s he like?” Dick asks, curious.

Wally snorts. “Full of himself.” He pauses. “Then again, like father, like son, I guess.”

* * *

The best person in their group to throw parties of the non-uptight-rich-person kind is Gar, for multiple reasons. He’s fun-loving, first of all, and second of all, his parents are almost always busy travelling the world for business and pleasure alike, giving Gar a free run of the mansion most of the time.

Third, he’s dating Vic, who’s twenty-one and buys their alcohol.

Dick doubts that half the people he can see through his car window even know why the party is happening – or care. The advantage of being _nouveau riche_ , as Alfred calls it, is that Gar knows and can relate to people from both sides of the class divide. As he parks and climbs up the stairs, Dick recognises acquaintances from in and around Southampton, but also friends who live in Montauk, people he’s met through Donna and Kory and Wal.

Theirs is an eclectic bunch in the truest sense of the term, Dick thinks. There’s Dick and Gar, and Garth’s adoptive parents are politicians, and Raven is an actual, honest-to-god Rajput princess. But then there’s also Kory and Wally and Donna, who don’t have their kind of money, but who, arguably, hold the group together. And there’s Vic, who’s kind of an in-between, with his father in the space program and all.

Dick gets along with Vic and Gar and Raven just fine, but he’s closer to the others. Sometimes he thinks money makes people colder, unable to connect with each other beyond a surface level. He used to be different, after all, he’s sure of it. Before he lost his parents. Before Bruce.

Now all he knows how to do is smile and laugh and not complain, but the thought gets too close to complaining for comfort, so he shoves it aside.

“There he is,” Donna says when he enters the foyer, spotting him in spite of the people milling around between him and the staircase. She beckons, and he follows her into the dining room.

The stranger from the convenience shop is standing with his friends.

Dick puts two and two together, and almost laughs aloud.

Roy Harper glances up. There’s faint recognition in his eyes, too, and Dick watches the same amusement dancing in them. “Oh, hey, Dick.” Wally gestures. “Roy, this is—”

“Dick Grayson, I know.” His voice has a subtle hoarse quality to it that Dick doesn’t expect; it’s deeply attractive. He holds out a hand. “Hi. I think we’re neighbours.”

“Hi,” Dick returns, taking it.

Wally looks relieved that he isn’t alone with Roy anymore, and says something about getting drinks. He slips away from them a little hastily. “I should have recognised you,” Dick says, chuckling wryly. “You look a little different in the photos, in the magazines and all? But now I see it.”

“You didn’t? I recognised you.” Roy grins. “So I guess you’re wondering why someone like me would be robbing petty stores for a smoke, huh.”

“I guess I am.” Dick smiles.

“Well, first of all, I don’t spend Ollie’s money, so let’s get that straight.” Roy makes a quick, fluid gesture with his fingers, snap and then point, it’s smooth, suave, cool. “Second, that guy didn’t like my jacket.”

“You always shoplift when you’re insulted?”

“Only if it’s for the things that count.” Roy smirks. “I hear this party is for you.”

“It’s for you, actually,” Dick says, just to see how he’d take the news. “I’m only the excuse. Everyone’s dying to know more about the newcomer, and… well, your reputation precedes you.”

Roy arches an eyebrow. “How far?”

“Far enough.” Dick sizes him up. Roy isn’t what he had expected him to be. Dick can see how Wally could call him full of himself – there’s a certain self-assuredness, an attitude, that he carries himself with, and it’s devoid of defensiveness, so it comes across as almost condescending. Like he’s too cool for everyone here. Like he and the universe share a joke that no one else is in on. “But the tabloids have called my father everything from a prodigy to a paedophile,” Dick continues. “So rest assured, I like to make my own mind up about people.”

The sharp edge to Roy’s smile disappears, mellowing some. “Thank you,” he says, and Dick can hear that he means it.

Dick likes him.

* * *

“You recognised me,” Dick says, the thought occurring to him all of a sudden. “How come? I don’t like my picture taken. There must be— what, one, two out there?”

Roy’s laugh sounds incredulous. “Uh, have you looked in a mirror lately?” he counters. “A face like that – one photograph or a million – it’s unforgettable.”

* * *

Donna pulls him away into the living room to dance when _You Spin Me Round_ comes on. The doors to the dining room have been thrown wide open, so Dick can still see what’s happening there, Gar and Roy chatting, Vic drinking, Wally looking bored.

“Your heart’s not in it,” Donna yells over the music, and her smile is teasing, mischievous.

Dick tears his eyes away.

Donna and Kory start dancing to a slow song, after, so Dick heads into the kitchen for refreshments. He’s about to enter the living room by that door, when he hears Roy’s distinct voice – “You have some seriously attractive friends. Donna— and Kory, I mean, Jesus, _Kory_ …”

“They’re lesbians. And dating each other,” Wally’s voice answers; he sounds irritated. Roy either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

“Lesbians are so fascinating.” A pause. “What about Dick, what’s his deal?”

Oh. Dick’s flattered, and more than a little relieved that he hadn’t read Roy’s intent wrong from the start. He enters the room, right behind the two of them. Roy doesn’t even seem abashed, it makes Dick want to play his game, to prove to be his equal. “He’s single,” Dick says, his voice faux-innocent.

Roy grins. “And interested?”

Dick shrugs, smiling right back. “And considering,” he corrects him.

“I was watching you…” Roy nods at the crowd still dancing in the living room. “You move like jazz, baby, all sex and no sleaze.”

Heat shoots right up to Dick’s cheeks, but he remembers his resolve to prove Roy’s equal, and so he only laughs. “I didn’t realise I was talking to a poet.”

Roy smirks. “Songwriter. Close enough.”

“…I am too straight for this conversation,” Wally mutters. He shakes his head at Dick, half fond and half exasperated, and makes for the kitchen.

Dick glances up at Roy through his eyelashes. It’s a look made for stronger men than Roy Harper, and Dick’s rewarded with the slightest hint of a swallow, a struggle for composure. “Not to be that guy, but.” Roy makes a pointed gesture. “Can I get you a drink?”

“I don’t drink. I’m not legal, besides.”

“Can I get you alone?”

“Depends on your… intentions.”

Roy raises both hands, like, _Scout’s honour_ , or something. “Stargazing and conversation.”

Dick laughs. “Well, in that case.” He raises one shoulder, up then down. “Lead on.”

* * *

It has never been so easy to talk to someone. Dick’s words run away from him, and he has to make a conscious effort to stop himself before he can say too much, several times. “I’m not this annoying, usually, I swear.” Dick laughs. “You’re a good listener.”

“No, please. You were too quiet before.” Roy smiles. Without the posturing, his smiles are actually really charming, still with that touch of playfulness, but much more genial. “Where do you go? For college. Somewhere fancy, huh.”

“Harvard. Business.”

Roy wrinkles his nose. “Really?”

Dick chuckles. “Is it that hard to believe?”

“The Harvard part, not at all. I see it.” Roy nods at Dick’s outfit. “It’s the Business part, but I don’t know. I don’t know you all that well yet, so.”

“I like it,” Dick lies. “Have you never considered— I mean, who gets the Queen Industries CEO chair if Oliver were to…”

“Oh, Ollie doesn’t get involved.” Roy chuckles. “He just owns it. Hates that kind of thing.”

Dick blinks. “Um, is that safe?”

“Not at all. I’m counting down to the day he gets double-crossed by one of those bastards and loses his fortune. Honestly? I think he’d like that.” Roy rolls his eyes. “So is that why you’re doing it? You’re preparing to…”

Dick nods, smiling wryly. “Someone has to.”

“The distance between _has_ and _wants_ is a million miles, kid.” Roy gives him a pitying look.

“I like it, really,” Dick insists. “I mean, what else would I do with my life?”

Roy shrugs. “Live it.”

Dick realises too late that his mouth has fallen open, and he hastily closes it.

* * *

It’s gratifying to see that Dick isn’t the only one getting carried away by whatever this spark between them is. The more they talk, the more Roy starts to seem human, tripping over his words, laughs becoming loud, eyes sparkling. Several times, people try to come out to the balcony, but then they see the two of them lost in the moment and turn around.

Roy starts talking about music, and he bursts into life.

“And you can’t— you can’t deny that the Beatles shaped the industry as we know it today. Love them or hate them— and I’m not a fan, personally, I’m more of a Dylan person— Bob Dylan—”

“God, Roy, I know who Bob Dylan is.”

Laughter. “Right. And they— I mean, they were the first ones to use more than your generic instruments in their music, you know? They brought in orchestras, experimented with synthesisers, hell, they invented metal music… Helter Skelter, nobody had ever sung like that before. So they dominated the music industry, no one else got a shot, and then they broke up, right, and it, like, what’s the word, it created a power vacuum? I mean, sure, you have the mediocre music of the previous decade, Queen excluded, but that’s because everyone was still holding on to that, that hope that the Beatles would get back together. Then John gets shot and that becomes a sure impossibility, right, so then this happens— the ’80s, the golden age of rock music. And it’s because of the Beatles. All of this latent talent, fighting it out for the throne they vacated. See?”

Dick’s a little lost, shaking his head in amused confusion. “I don’t know, I think I always just liked Paul…”

Roy makes a frustrated gesture. “You can’t pick a favourite, Dick, that’s missing the point. The magic they created— there’s a reason why none of them could replicate it in their solo careers. I mean, who writes stuff like that? _Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. God is a concept by which we measure our pain_ — who writes stuff like that?”

“You’ve been spilling gems yourself all night long.”

“I had a Muse.” Roy winks. “Anyway— they’re gold, they should have been great songs, but they’re Lennon solos, so they’re missing that McCartney melody. Meanwhile, all of us are humming, _something, something, silly love songs_ , the stupidest lyrics in the world, right? But it’s fucking catchy.”

Dick nods. “The magic was in the whole.”

Roy looks pleased, and nods as well. “Man meets moment. Or, well, in their case— man meets man.”

Dick laughs under his breath. “So you believe in things like that? Fated encounters?”

Roy’s smile grows wide, splits his face, almost. “Tell me you’re flirting with me,” he says. “I haven’t had a lucky break in years, make my night, pretty one…”

And Dick can only laugh again. It comes out startled. “How do you just _say_ things like that? Goodness.”

Roy only shrugs and grins, unapologetic. Dick shakes his head.

“Half the room had its eyes on you when you walked in,” he says. “And you weren’t exactly turning away, either. I know trouble when I see it.”

Roy clutches his chest in mock appal. Dick laughs.

“Well, you’re in luck.” He bites his lip, meets Roy’s eyes head on. “I don’t have much of a sense of self-preservation, see.”

Roy smiles and steps closer. Closer still. There isn’t a kiss, but there’s the promise of one, in his eyes and the brush of his thumb against Dick’s lips.

The rest of the night stays quiet.

* * *

“Have you been drinking?” Bruce asks. It’s a valid question – Dick hasn’t been this chatty in years, not since— well. And it almost feels like it, too; he’s giddy and there’s a feeling in his chest so overwhelming he thinks his heart is about to burst.

“You know I don’t, it was just a fun time, that’s all. I missed them…”

Nothing good happens this fast, he tells himself. Nothing good ever happens this fast.

* * *

He opens his eyes to the sunlight touching his pillow and his turned-up wrist; across the inside of it, in black ink, is scrawled a string of numbers. Dick lingers in bed for a minute and memorises them so he can wash them off later.

The smell of ocean air is drifting in through the open balcony doors, and a sudden breeze pushes the curtain forward in a billowing wave so high it almost touches Dick’s face. The morning feels full of promises, somehow, and as he slips out of bed he catches himself humming.

Later finds him curled up on the blue-cushioned couch, one hand holding the telephone up to his ear and the other idly twirling its cord. “I’ll be seeing you later,” Roy’s voice tells him. “Ollie and I got an invite to dinner from your old man.”

“Tonight?” Dick’s breath catches. He finds himself, ridiculously, thinking about what to wear.

“Tonight,” Roy confirms, and there’s a smile in his voice. “I can’t wait to see you again.”

Dick laughs quietly. “Oh, you probably tell everyone that.”

But six o’ clock still feels simultaneously millennia away and too soon to prepare for. When Dick makes a subtle comment about Bruce being social outside of work, for once, Bruce tells him the idea had been Lucius’s, which means there is an ulterior motive to this get-together, after all. He doesn’t have room for disappointment in his mind at the moment, however. He steals another glance at the clock.

And then it’s time. There are the headlights through his window, the doorbell, the sounds of polite laughter and conversation.

* * *

He distrusts Oliver already. It’s something about his eyes. They’re the same shade of blue as Bruce’s, but Bruce has kind eyes, the sort that had once made even a traumatised child who’d just lost his parents feel safe, in spite of the man’s otherwise intimidating demeanour. Oliver’s, on the other hand, are cold. Dick gets the impression that he can be cruel if he needs to be. There’s the same air of amusement around him that Dick had felt in Roy, but it lacks the playfulness of Roy’s, and feels, instead, like Oliver’s judging the world, and it will never meet his standards.

“—And this is my eldest.” Bruce rests a hand on Dick’s shoulder, and Dick smiles obligingly.

“Dick, right? Roy mentioned you.” Oliver gives him a smile and a quick handshake. Behind him, Roy rolls his eyes, and then he catches Dick’s and hides a grin. Dick deliberately lingers when the adults and his siblings make their way into the hall so he can fall in step with Roy.

“Come here often?” he whispers, biting back a smile.

Roy shakes with quiet laughter. “I will now.”

“So you _mentioned_ me, huh.”

“I told him how I took a walk in the woods one day and caught a pretty little bird…”

Tim, a few steps in front of them, glances up, curiosity in his wide eyes. “What kind of bird?” he asks.

Roy gives Dick a considering look, and then a smirk. He turns to Tim, and there’s a very good estimation of seriousness in his voice. “It was a blue jay.”

Dick tries not to laugh. “Wasn’t it a robin?”

“It was a blue jay that was so modest it believed it was a robin.”

Tim wrinkles his nose. “You’re weird.”

“Aw, thanks, kid. I try.” Roy turns to Dick again. “Nice place you guys got.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Dick smiles. “It used to be parish land. Gardens and a chapel. The villa was built in the ’60s, I think, by some movie star or the other.” They pass the parlour, which Roy peers into with some confusion.

“I’m guessing the other one was the morning room— oh, a separate music room, too, huh— wait, _billiards_? Where’s your dining room? You guys lounge more than you eat?”

Dick chuckles. “No, we dine al fresco usually. This place was built to be _contemporary traditional_ or whatever, so, you know. For authenticity’s sake. But breakfast is acceptable in the kitchen.”

“I mean, if we’re going for authentic, used to be they wore a lot less in Ancient Rome.” Roy grins. Dick colours, and elbows him.

Ahead of them, Oliver and Bruce seem to be discussing the architecture as well. “How much does it cost to even just heat the whole place?” Oliver is asking. Dick doesn’t like his tone, and if he can catch it, he knows Bruce has, too.

“A bit.” Dick can picture Bruce arching an eyebrow.

“Kind of wasteful, don’t you think?” Oliver says, with a chuckle that does nothing to soften the words. “But, hey. It’s not like you personally designed it, right. We just happen to live in a culture of excess – if you got it, flaunt it.”

The sarcasm in his voice is cutting. Dick’s shocked by the brazenness of it. Oliver’s upbringing betrays itself in how he twists his words so that the insult is _implied_ , but it’s still, clearly, _there_.

At dinner, things only escalate. Dick _wants_ to continue getting distracted by Roy playing footsies under the table with him, but Oliver’s still talking about the expenses of maintaining the villa, and when the words _carbon footprint_ come up, Dick knows it won’t end well. He hasn’t met anyone who’s been able to rile Bruce up before, but Bruce’s patience is very visibly wearing thin.

“—I mean, with how Wayne Enterprises has a finger in every pie and all…” Oliver shrugs. “Running a company of Orwellian proportions like yours, shouldn’t you consider your responsibilities?”

Bruce sets his fork down. Dick tries not to flinch. “I’m sure there’s a lot that we can be accused of. Clearly.” Bruce sounds curt. “But we’ve never been war profiteers, so there is that.”

The table goes silent, except for the sounds of Tim’s and Cass’s cutlery moving, blissfully ignorant. Dick knows what Queen Industries has been involved in, everyone does. Oliver’s eyes flash.

“So, Bruce. Dick tells me some old movie star used to own the place, that true?” Roy’s smile is so amiable, it’s easy to believe that he really hadn’t heard what Bruce had just said. Relief and a not insignificant amount of gratitude rush through Dick.

He gives Roy a surreptitious smile. “It was, uh, what was her name? Alma something.”

Roy takes his cue, and the pair of them steer the rest of the conversation toward safer territory.

After dinner, Dick heads upstairs to check on Damian, and first stops by his room for a breather. Oliver and Bruce are still pulling a charade of pleasantries downstairs – it’d have been rude for their guests to leave right away – and Dick trusts the need to keep up appearances to stop them from further passive-aggressive trash-talking. He steps out onto the balcony and breathes in the ocean air, and then he hears a distinct voice from below.

“Let down your hair?”

Dick gives Roy a smile. “Hold on, I’ll be right with—”

“No, just back up a little,” Roy answers, doing so himself.

“Can you make it?” Dick asks even as he does as he had been told.

“Trust me.”

Roy takes a running leap, and he finds his grip on the marble with ease. “Colour me impressed,” Dick says, smiling as Roy pulls himself up and onto the balcony. Roy returns it.

“Our dads hate each other.”

Dick chuckles and reaches for Roy’s face. “Wherefore art thou Oliver’s.”

“He’s not a bad person, I swear.” Roy sighs. “It’s an Ollie thing. Worst foot forward.”

“Shouldn’t that be _best_ foot forward?”

“Nope – worst foot forward,” Roy insists, sighing again. “Ollie does it on purpose when he meets new people. Helps him suss out the real friends from the hypocrites, apparently. See, with him, it’s all about allegiances. You’re either on his side or not. So he likes to make his side obvious as early as possible. Save himself the time.”

“You sound like you disapprove.”

Roy shrugs. “I agree with his ideas. It’s just that I believe in fighting institutions, not people. Why make enemies when you can have friends?”

Dick leans up and presses his lips against Roy’s, gentle.

Roy smiles when he parts. “…Then again, why have friends when you can kiss them.”

Dick lets Roy lead the next one, languid and warm as the summer days. He wants to make it last, but he also doesn’t want to answer questions about swollen lips, so he has to nudge Roy back, a hand on his chest, smiling softly. “Not that I’d say no to going on forever, but…”

Roy chuckles. “Hop over the wall tomorrow, we’ll take our time on the beach. Say, early in the morning, before other people start showing up?”

“It’s a date.” Dick smiles wide. “Come on, let’s finish your tour of the place.”

* * *

It takes all of five seconds after Roy picks him up for Damian to sink his teeth into Roy’s palm. Roy yelps, and Dick is half-laughing, half-apologising.

“He’s a miniature demon!”

“He’s _teething_.” Dick takes Damian back, clicking his tongue in reproach. “Don’t listen to him, Demi, he just wishes I was holding _him_ this close.” Dick smirks.

Roy laughs in spite of himself, albeit grudgingly. “You like kids, huh.”

“I like my siblings, sure.” Dick hums. “You have two, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, if you don’t count Cissie, after the divorce and all. By the way,” Roy adds with a pointed huff, “ _My_ brother’s an angel. Definitely not a biter. Christ, that hurt.”

“…Aren’t you close to each other in terms of age?”

“Irrelevant.”

“Mm-hmm.” Dick rolls his eyes. “Well, that’s the whole house. If you come by while the sun’s still up next time, I’ll show you the conservatory.”

Roy smiles. “Cool. I’ll try not to rob you too soon.”

“How do you like the cottage?”

“It’s not terrible.” Roy shrugs. “Except for that Dali print in my bedroom, that’s just offensive. The one that’s a trypophobic nightmare— _Enigma_ something? I fucking hate surrealists.” He stops to take a seat on one of the bean-bags. “Says all I need to know about the owners, though. Avant-garde art, minimalist décor…” He makes a derisive noise. “Rich people, I swear.”

Dick chuckles. “We _are_ rich people, Roy.”

“Come on, Dick, I know you know what I mean.” Roy gives him an unimpressed look. “We lived the same shit, didn’t we?”

“If we’re about to start comparing after-school kidnapping attempts…”

Roy laughs, a loud, genuine sound that makes Dick’s heart skip a beat. Again, he thinks. Again.

* * *

“What’s in there?” Roy asks, inevitably. His curious eyes have found the door, the fading letters of Jason’s name on worn paper.

“Nothing.” Dick clears his throat. “We don’t use that room.”

“Haunted?”

Dick smiles bitterly. “You could say that.”

* * *

 _Don’t look down,_ his father used to say, while he had been teaching him their trademark triple somersault. _When you’re in the tuck, if you stop to look down, you’ll lose your centre. You’ll fall._

Stopping to think could cost you everything, up in the air. You didn’t. You just had to jump, to trust that someone would be there to catch you on the other side.

Dick likes Roy. He really, really likes Roy. He’s hurtling face-first into liking Roy, in fact, and he’s not sure that anyone’s waiting to catch him when all the things that can go wrong inevitably do. The obstacle that’s going to be the hardest to keep avoiding is staring him in the face at that very moment, there on the sand behind a boulder with Roy in his mouth and on his skin and across his senses. Kissing had turned into wandering hands into helpless, uncontrollable _want_ — and then Dick feels Roy hard against his thigh and has to push him away, breath hitching.

Roy doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t ask _what’s wrong_ , doesn’t try to bargain or coax; he immediately leans back and stops kissing. So he’s a good person, Dick thinks, there’d been no doubt about it, but that means nothing, he’s lost good people over this before. They’d been kind about their rejections – _it’s just not what I’m into, you understand, right?_ – but rejections they still had been.

There’s a reason the only relationship he had ever consummated had been with Kory, who’s like him, whom he doesn’t have to build a case with first. He could meet the loveliest girl only to get told, _I’m not a lesbian._ Even from other bisexual partners, he’d hear, _that’s okay, I’m attracted to both._ And those are the best-case scenarios, not the ones where Bruce has to get involved, to threaten and to buy silence.

“Dick?” Roy leans forward, concern in his eyes. “Hey, are you okay? You went all pale…”

“I’m alright.” Dick tries to smile, though he knows it probably looks strained. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it. “It’s just that… if you were planning on going further, I just thought you should know, I’m trans.”

He plays with the sleeves of his too-loose zip-up jacket, feigning nonchalance in his voice. “Are you disappointed?” he ventures.

“…No. A little surprised.” Roy reaches out and cups his face, smiling kindly. “I used to live in the Castro for the longest time. I can promise you, Dick, you’re less alone than you think.”

Relief floods him, and Dick returns Roy’s smile. He can see the questions in Roy’s eyes, and he laughs. “Ask.” This is a chore to deal with, too, but it’s more bearable than his fears.

But Roy doesn’t ask the usual tried and tired, “What was your name before—?”, or, “Do you have a—?”

“In the papers and everything, you’ve _always_ been referred to as a guy,” he says instead, his voice intrigued. “So when did you…?”

“Oh. When I was five? I think?” Dick considers it.

“Huh. You can find out as early as that?”

“Sure.”

“Cool. Never knew.” Roy sounds fascinated.

And that’s that. He doesn’t go out of his way to reassure, advise, or patronise. He does touch Dick a lot more – not like that; a hand draped across his shoulders or little, sideways half-squeeze half-hugs as they walk back to the cottage – and Dick reads it as the promise that it is, that for Roy, this changes nothing.

* * *

Steering the conversation back to the mundane doesn’t even feel the slightest bit less than natural. “You lived in San Francisco.”

“I still kind of do?” Roy doesn’t meet Dick’s eyes, squinting ahead instead. “When I can, anyway. I live everywhere. I’m kind of— functionally homeless.”

Dick blinks. “How do you mean?”

Roy shrugs. “There was a time when Ollie just kind of stopped caring whether I came home or not, so I fell into the habit of staying over at friends’, or girl-or-boyfriends’, or whoever’s. Never really been able to break it. ’Sides, I don’t like to stay with Ollie if I can help it. We used to fight too much, and now it’s just…” He trails off, frowning absently.

“Just?” Dick prompts, soft.

Frantic all of a sudden, Roy’s fingers reach into the inside pocket of his jacket and slip out a pack of cigarettes. “He lectures. Can’t let go of the past. You smoke, Pretty Bird?”

Dick almost says _no_ right off the bat, like he usually does, but he remembers that this is Roy, and he kind of doesn’t want to be any other version of himself but _himself_ , with Roy. “Menthols. I like the flavoured ones. Yours are just disgusting.”

“Hey.” Roy elbows him. He lights up, takes a drag, blows out a puff of smoke. “Currently, I share an apartment with my sister Mia. At least, on paper, I do.” He laughs. “I don’t think Mia’s ever home, either, come to think of it. If I _really_ don’t have a choice, then it’s Ollie’s penthouse. Not while he was married, though. It was better to sleep on the streets than have to deal with King Bonnie’s attitude toward the charity cases of the family. Am I oversharing? Oh, well. Secret for a secret.” He winks.

“But you’re alone with Ollie now.”

“Yeah, the plan was to give it two days and then hitchhike up to a real city.” Roy chuckles.

Dick isn’t surprised, somehow, and returns the laugh. “What changed?”

Roy loops an arm around his waist. It’s startlingly intimate, and Dick shivers, pushing closer. “Found a reason to stay.”

Dick hides his smile. “So… yes to a second date?”

* * *

It’s yes to a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, as it turns out. “Uh-oh,” says Donna, mischief in her eyes as she leans toward Dick across the table, “You’re in boy-flirting mode with this one.”

The Hummingbird is usually quiet on Sunday, but ever since Roy, it’s different. He seems to bring a party with him everywhere he goes. Gar loves it; the two of them are, in fact, currently just behind the bar, playing darts and flirting with patrons and generally being children. Dick glances up at Donna, confused. “I’m in what?”

Donna explains. “When you flirt with girls, you’re this classy, respectable, even-the-mothers-want-you dream darling.” She gives him a playful grin. “But with boys, you’re different – you rarely choose them, but when you do, it’s like, I don’t know, you give off this _implied_ sensuality. Subtle, witty, charming, dangerous.” Nodding in Roy’s direction, “You’re into him for serious, huh.”

“Be careful,” Wally says, an uncharacteristic, deep scowl pulling his lips down. “If you ask me, he spells nothing but trouble.”

“Nobody did.” Donna rolls her eyes. “Let him have _fun_ , Wal.” The pointed look that she gives Wally gives Dick the distinct impression that they’re alluding to conversations he’d never been privy to— conversations about him, he supposes. It’s vaguely concerning.

“Roy’s not what you think he’s like,” he insists. “You’re just stereotyping, Wal. Just because he talks and walks and dresses a certain way—”

Wally isn’t able to catch Dick abruptly cutting himself off, and before either Dick or Donna can warn him, he continues, “Don’t forget that he could have been in rehab for God knows what—”

Donna elbows him in the stomach, but it’s too late. Roy throws himself down on the seat next to them with a casual smile. “It’s fine, Don. He’s not wrong.”

Dick gives him a concerned look, but Roy doesn’t meet his eyes as he shrugs and continues. “It was heroin addiction. A bunch of other shit. That satisfy you, Inquisitor?” He reaches for the cup of coffee that he had abandoned earlier and stands again. “Hey, Gar, up for one more round? Bet you twenty.”

Wally has the decency, at least, to look mortified. “Oh, jeez, Roy, I didn’t mean—” He gets off his chair too, going after Roy.

Dick considers following, but Wally needs to apologise on his own first, he decides. Donna catches his aborted attempt to stand and breathes a laugh. “I don’t agree with Wally, just to be clear,” she says. “But, Dick? Just so you know. Every time I point my camera at someone, I see them immediately change, immediately put on a pose or a persona that isn’t them. Not Roy, though. He stays just as he is.”

Defensive all of a sudden, Dick frowns. “Isn’t that a good thing? It means he’s always true to himself.”

Donna hums. “Or it means he never is.”

She stands, and walks off to where Kory is helping Dinah. Dick contemplates his coffee for a moment, and then he catches Roy walking away from the dartboard to a table close by. He hurries to join him.

Roy doesn’t look up when he takes the seat next to him. Dick feels like something’s squeezing at his heart. He reaches for Roy’s face, and then he kisses him. He can feel Roy’s surprise – Dick isn’t big on PDA, generally, beyond holding hands and hugging – but the place is pretty empty on a Sunday like this, and Dick needs Roy to know that he isn’t ashamed. Of them, or of Roy.

No matter what.

Roy sighs into his mouth. He holds Dick’s waist in his hands, smiling ruefully as he pulls back. “I would have told you,” he whispers. “Eventually. I guess I wanted you to think I was better than I really am.”

“There are things about myself that I hide, too.” Dick caresses whatever he can reach. He pauses, and takes Roy’s hand in his. “Secret for a secret?”

“I have this bad habit of misplacing my fathers,” Roy says.

Dick hums. “I don’t think I even know who your father was. How is it that they can report every single wild party and crazy car chase, but not something as basic as that?” He shakes his head. “You’re one big mystery, Roy Harper.”

He can feel Roy shaking with quiet laughter. “What’s your secret?”

Dick lifts his eyes. He gives Roy a slow smile. “I’m a very good detective,” he says.

* * *

“Where’ve you been?” Bruce is outside of his study, for once.

“Out,” Dick answers cheerfully. “Montauk.”

“With that Harper boy again?”

Dick laughs. “Come on, Bruce, he’s nothing like Ollie.”

Bruce makes some ambiguous sound that Dick doesn’t bother deciphering, already thinking about calling Roy on the phone upstairs, talking until they fall asleep again.

* * *

Garth finds it all amusing. Wally’s (far subtler) criticisms of Roy only make him laugh, and Dick’s careful avoidance of revealing the extent of their relationship bring a light to his eyes. “He’s so, I don’t know, _slick_ ,” Wally’s saying, derision in his voice. “Hits on everything that breathes, Garth, you should see it. I swear, it’s sickening.”

Garth arches an eyebrow. “Pun unintended?”

“Stop it, don’t be morbid.” Dick shoves him lightly. “Anyway, Roy’s leaving once summer ends, isn’t he?” He tries to ignore the pain that comes with voicing that particular thought. “We _can’t_ be exclusive.”

Wally stares at him. “…Who are you, and what have you done with my best friend?”

“Wal, I _love_ that you’re concerned for me, honest, I do.” Dick sighs. “But I can take care of myself, all right?”

“It’s all you ever do,” Garth points out in a small voice. “Dick, how are you coping, really? Donna tells me things are serious, too. If he leaves…”

Dick laughs it off. “I just don’t look down.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Dick tucks a strand of his hair behind one ear. “Seriously, both of you can stop worrying. I’m fine, I’ll be fine, this is— it’s not that serious. It’s hardly been two weeks.”

“I’m sorry, I’m still trying to compute _you_ and _a relationship_ and _not serious_ ,” says Wally. “Honestly, Garth, I’m starting to think you got the better deal, isolated from all of our drama.”

Garth smiles sheepishly. “…Is this a bad time to tell you I’m getting discharged, then?”

There’s startled silence, and then there’s helpless joy, hugs and loud cheering that Dick’s sure will get them kicked out by some poor, angry nurse. Donna, who had been out in the hall, keeping Roy company, peers inside to see what all the fuss is about, and soon she’s joining in the group hug-slash-dance, too. Out of the corner of his eyes, Dick spies Roy hanging back, awkward but smiling at their happiness. “Baby.” Dick stretches a hand out for him. “Garth, this is Roy. Roy, Garth.”

“Hey, man, nice to meet you.” Roy’s smile is strained as they exchange a handshake. “Sorry for not coming in earlier, I, uh. I don’t like hospitals.”

Dick really regrets not telling Roy where they had been going, before, but it’s the second time that day that he’s thought it, and there was no use crying over spilled milk, after all. Garth tilts his head, questioning, and Dick wishes he had answers. He can see Roy’s hand twitch, and it reaches into the pocket of his jacket. Dick touches his wrist. “It’s a no smoking zone, Roy.”

“Right.” Roy runs a nervous hand through his hair. His eyes are taking in the room, the cards and flowers and boxes of chocolate at Garth’s bedside, the wheelchair, waiting. “You get a lot of— visitors, Garth?” he asks abruptly.

Garth’s surprised, but he smiles and nods, ever polite. “Sure. My parents. My girlfriend. These guys, even if all they do is cause a racket and get me in trouble.”

“Good. That’s good.” Roy nods, almost to himself. “Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ll be outside, okay?”

“Not at all…” Garth blinks. Concerned, Dick follows him out.

“I fucking hate hospitals.” Roy’s fingers frantically dig around for his pack of cigarettes. Coming up empty, he swears again.

“Roy. Roy, hey.” Dick wants to reach for him, but they’re in a public place, and they can’t risk it. “Should we— we could wait in the car? Will that make it better?”

“Yeah,” Roy says absently. “Yeah, okay. Let’s.”

As soon as they slip into the backseat and Dick closes the door behind them, Roy leans forward, and twists the key for the ignition, automatically turning on the stereo. Some random rock song plays at a low volume. “What’s wrong with him?” Roy asks.

Dick exhales, and talks to his knees. “It’s neurological. He can’t— he needs the wheelchair. When we were— fourteen, fifteen, I think— he used to be swim team captain. And now he needs the wheelchair.”

Roy huffs. “Ain’t that life.”

“Is it because it reminds you of rehab?” Dick ventures.

Roy laughs under his breath. “Wow, that didn’t even occur to me. You’re right, too. Ought to be in college for psychology, not business, Dickie.” He pauses. Then he sighs. “You never know how alone you are until you’re stuck in one of those rooms, I swear. But, nah, I always figured I hated the places ’cause I’ve seen too many friends die in them.”

He lived in the Castro, Dick remembers, sobering at once. “Oh, I. I’m so sorry.”

“Mia, she’s positive.” Roy’s visibly angry. “Could be her turn any time. We don’t know. Who does, you know? They don’t fucking tell us anything.”

“Except horror stories. And _have you tried not being gay?_ PSAs.” Dick purses his lips.

“They don’t let you have visitors. In rehab,” Roy blurts out all of a sudden. “Not for the first month— and if you’re in for something as bad as mine, not for the first _couple_ months.” His fingers are frantically tapping along to the beat of the drums in the song playing between them. “That’s assuming people _want_ to see your sorry face when they’re allowed to, too, of course. You’re also not allowed a telephone. Or letters. Or a Walkman, and they didn’t have a radio or a record player or a fucking _phonograph_ , so there was no fucking music.”

That, for some reason, is what breaks Dick’s heart. Roy without music. He runs his hand up and down Roy’s arm, aiming to comfort.

“You were allowed books. And a journal. Took me a while to figure out that writing _I would rather eat a bullet than stay here one more second_ in it only gets you sent to the counsellor twice as often.” He exhales a humourless laugh. Almost in a whisper, he says, “…I’m not good alone.”

“You’re not alone,” Dick answers, something fierce in his heart. He pushes closer to Roy, half-hugging him, half-leaning on his shoulder. “You’re not alone, Roy.”

* * *

Dinah’s too gorgeous not to get snatched up soon. Dick’s always said so.

Still, seeing it happen makes his heart sink.

He and the others are back from the hospital, back at the Hummingbird. They aren’t the only ones there. Oliver Queen is at the bar counter, leaning forward and whispering something to Dinah that makes her laugh in a very not-Dinah way, hiding her mouth behind the back of her hand. Beside Dick, Roy mutters, “…Oh, hell,” and then he raises his voice. “Hey.”

Oliver turns. “There you are, Roy,” he says. “Came looking for you.” And then he holds a hand up and turns back to Dinah. Even while they’re taking their seats, Dick can’t help but glance back at the pair at the bar over and over again.

“How old is she?” Roy asks Dick, something sceptical in the downward twist of his mouth.

“Twenty-five, I think.”

Roy glances back. “This is not going to end well.”

Later, Dick seeks out Barbara, alone in the backroom, and then he doesn’t know what to say. “Babs?” he tries. “You, um. You okay?”

“Crossword, Dick,” Barbara answers without looking up from her magazine. “I said not to interrupt.”

Her voice is rough as sandpaper.

* * *

Dinah stays over at the cottage one night. Dick wakes to find Roy yelling up at him from under his window; despite Bruce’s dirty looks, he lets Roy in for a movie and some company.

* * *

He has never gone out of his way to tell Bruce about his relationships. Bruce does find out, of course, he always would, but never with help from Dick.

But Dick has never gone out of his way to _hide_ them before, either. With Roy, though, it’s sheer necessity.

The disaster dinner with Ollie had been the first strike; Roy had called Bruce by his name the next time they’d met, and Bruce had tactfully corrected him and now Roy knew him as Mr. Wayne. “Fair enough,” Roy had said, shrugging it off. “Ollie left an impression, I get it.”

But Dick knew it was more than that. Not that Bruce would ever admit to it, but Dick knew him. It was the fact that Roy had _presumed_ , in the first place. The fact that Roy tended to just show up at the villa unannounced, that he’d even shown up visibly drunk, once, that he laughed far too loudly and convinced Tim to play catch indoors and wrestled with Ace and Titus on the carpet.

The little things that screamed _irrepressible_ , that said that restraint was not a word in Roy Harper’s vocabulary, and good luck to all who tried to make it.

Bruce, with his rules and diligence and reverence for lawfulness, for order – is his antithesis. Oh, they’re civil to each other, but Dick can sense a natural dislike between them, same as the one he imagines is tangible between him and Oliver. It can be a snide comment here and there, to each other’s faces or behind backs, or a look, or a deep and damning exhale.

Like that one time. “What do you think of punk, Dickie?” Roy had asked at lunch, and Dick had shrugged, said, “Not one for the music, a lot of respect for the culture.”

“What culture?” Bruce had cut in sardonically. “Anarchy, disorder, and shock value?”

Or the time when Bruce had made the mistake of implying that Ollie was a neglectful father when asking what Roy was still doing at the villa. It had taken Dick a moment to catch that, but Roy had flared up immediately. “The fuck do you know about him? About us?” he had bitten back, voice shaking with a violent rage. “You think you do a better job? A workaholic who doesn’t even make the time to play with his little kids. And you’re _blind_ when it comes to Dick—”

Dick had managed to calm things down, but there was a palpable tension, a forced quality to the civility now.

For all of their sakes, Dick tries to avoid spending time _inside_ with Roy. Montauk and the beach serve as their haunts, or the occasional drive, to Long Island, even all the way to Manhattan one time.

Except that means that they never have the time or the privacy to go further than frantic kissing and long make-out sessions. It chafes. Dick’s love language is physical touch. He’s sparing with it toward people he has no intimacy with, but that line had long been crossed with Roy, and he quite literally can’t keep his hands off him these days. Roy can have his beautiful turns of phrase, wooing with a skill that could rival the Bard. Dick has his hands, his mouth, his skin; and while idle touch and closeness is great and all, he’s young, and it isn’t _enough_.

And then the universe steps in – as it seems to have done from the start with the two of them – and Roy just so happens to be at the villa while Bruce just so happens to be away on a two-day business trip and the radio just so happens to broadcast a hurricane warning, a Category 1 headed their way.

“You had better stay the night, Master Harper,” says Alfred, clicking his tongue at the news, as if hurricanes were a fad that he disapproved of. “I must ask Maxine as well, Master Damian may not sleep well on his own with weather like that…”

“Let the kids share a room tonight, then, Alfred. It could be fun. Distract them.” Dick keeps his voice casual, almost nonchalant.

“Very good, Master Richard.” There’s no indication that Alfred suspects anything behind the words, and he goes right back to work without interrupting Dick and Roy again.

The hurricane hits, and, predictably, takes the power out. They all wait in the parlour for it to return: Dick sprawled out on the couch, Roy sitting on the floor with his back against its leg, Alfred reading by candlelight in one corner. Cassandra is at the piano, and Tim is playing some noisy game with Damian and the nanny on the steps.

“Cass,” Dick shouts over the sound of thunder and howling wind, “Play us something we know, would you, please?”

She nods once, in her serious way, and then the theme from _Somewhere in Time_ mellows out the harsh noise of the storm.

Dick lies back and enjoys it. The back of Roy’s head is right next to where his face rests on a little pillow, and he can smell a hint of cologne and some fruity shampoo. If he shifts forward, just a little, his nose presses against the prickle of Roy’s hair. Their corner shrouded by shadow, Dick can get away with running a hand across Roy’s broad shoulder, slowly, appreciatively.

He feels more than hears Roy’s quiet laugh. “Where are you going, Pretty Bird?” Roy whispers, tilting his head back. In the dim light, Dick can’t see the amusement in his eyes, but he senses it.

“You’re kind of…” Dick leans forward even further, and his hand has wandered far enough that he can slip it past the collar of Roy’s shirt, discovering firm muscle that he takes his time feeling, relishing. His words are being whispered right against Roy’s ear. “…Kind of irresistible…”

And then he abruptly withdraws, a little alarmed by the frantic pounding of his heart against its cage. “I think,” he says, loud this time, “I think I’m going to bed.”

He can feel Roy’s eyes on him as he leaves the couch, kisses Cassandra on the head, then Tim, then Damian twice, then Alfred, a quick peck on the cheek.

* * *

Dick has taken a hasty shower and changed into a set of nightclothes that he hadn’t opened before – and his bedroom remains empty, his door remains closed. He lies on the bed, staring up at the chandelier and wondering if he should have made the invitation more obvious. The wind is throwing raindrops violently against the glass of the balcony doors, and he covers his eyes with his arm across them, trying and failing to keep his heart from mirroring the weather and calm down.

It’s a wonder that he can hear the tell-tale creaking of the door being eased open through the noise outside. He leans up on his elbows, and gives Roy a slow smile. “Well, hi there.”

Roy is doing that thing, that crooked grin where his tongue reaches up and touches one of his chipped canines, and Dick’s stomach does a complicated flip in response.

The door clicks shut behind Roy. “Hey yourself.”

The distance between them is bridged in a few long strides. Dick welcomes the weight of Roy’s body draping over his. His hands wrap around as much of Roy’s back as they can, the tips of his fingers just barely able to meet in the middle. “Been wanting this for so long, Roy…”

“So take what you want, baby,” Roy answers, and his voice holds a wealth of sinful promise that he immediately proceeds to make good upon.

Thankfully, the noise of the violent weather outside drowns out Dick’s vocal appreciation of Roy holding him down by the wrists and taking him to heaven. “…Don’t fall asleep here,” Dick warns, after, finally able to get his breathing under control. “Alfred will see.”

“’Kay.” Roy makes a vague, assenting noise. His hands are mapping Dick’s neck, his face. “God, you’re so fucking _beautiful_ …”

Dick laughs under his breath, the wrong side of giddy. “No, Roy.” And it’s not like it’s the first time he’s heard the words, but they mean so much more, from Roy, right then, right there.

“You are,” Roy insists. “Someone great should paint you.”

“A surrealist?”

Roy laughs. He rolls over twice, landing on his stomach. Dick takes the opportunity to lean up on one arm and with his free hand trace the tattoos that cover all of Roy’s back; a mural in all the colours of autumn. Lit only by the moonlight and thunder outside, the various shapes seem almost magical. There are huge records, train tracks, bar codes, and a myriad other things thrown together in artful chaos that mirrors Roy himself. The only unambiguous one is in the centre. “Is this a fox?” Dick asks, running his fingers along its outline.

“Coyote.” There’s a slight accent in the way Roy says the word that Dick can’t place, which makes it sound mysterious. Unconsciously, Dick makes his touch lighter, almost reverent.

“Is there a story behind this one?”

Roy breathes a quiet laugh into the pillow. “You don’t tell Coyote stories unless there is frost on the ground – in the wintertime, that means, Dickie, sorry.”

“Superstition?”

“Navajo custom.” Roy sighs in a way that suggests it’s unintentional, and it sounds almost wistful. “And no, he isn’t my spirit animal. That’s not a thing in the way that people keep thinking it’s a thing.”

Roy sounds like he genuinely knows what he’s talking about, which sparks Dick’s curiosity. “Are you Navajo?” he asks. It’s not impossible. Looks can be deceiving, and he would know.

Roy turns on his side. “Secret for a secret?”

“Okay.”

His bright eyes, cat’s-eye bright tonight, get that look in them that Dick loves, something musing, philosophical, and – Dick imagines – almost uncharacteristic if you didn’t know Roy all that well. He sits up, and Dick envies how at home he is with his body, tucking one leg under the other and resting his hand on his knee, not even the slightest bit self-conscious of being nude. _Someone great should sculpt you in marble,_ Dick thinks.

“My father told me that there was a big thunderstorm on the night that I was born.” Roy chuckles to himself. “ _That’s why you’re so wild,_ he said. ’Course, then I figured out I was adopted, and that was a lie.” He makes a contemplative sound, talking to his knee. “He took me in when my actual father died. Don’t remember much about that one, except that he talked like this – ” This in a fine Irish brogue, tucking his syllables under his tongue – “And I was raised on the Navajo reservation— in Arizona. The rest of them didn’t agree with the poetic version about why I was such a little shit, though. Nah, the preferred one was that I had the mark of Coyote on me.”

His hand reaches across his stomach like he’s trying to hug himself, and brushes against the tattoo on his back. “Mą’ii. Trickster god. Irresponsible, foolish, and very, very bad luck. I remember thinking— I didn’t ask for that. I didn’t ask for any of it. If I could have made myself look less like myself and more like them, I would have. If I could have changed my blood— and then my father, he gets sick, fatally sick, and he starts worrying about what’ll happen to me when he bites it, worrying about me getting kicked out of the tribe ’cause I’m not Diné, so he hands me over to Ollie. And I didn’t ask for that, either.”

He exhales, and it’s longsuffering. “I was sick of things just _happening_ to me, you know? Sick of being the passive character in this story. So I decided— I’d stop. _I’d_ make things happen in my own goddamn life instead of letting circumstance keep having its way with me. For the record, Dick, I still stand by that. Made a lot of crap decisions along the way as a result, sure. But, hey— at least they were _my_ crap decisions.”

“You’re so brave,” Dick marvels.

Roy starts, and turns his head around so fast, Dick’s taken aback. And then he settles, although his fingers are drumming on his knee in a tic that Dick now recognises means that he’s shaken. “Your turn, Dickie,” he says.

Dick turns on his back, staring up at the ceiling. “I lied. I hate college.”

He can hear Roy laughing softly beside him, and a strong hand comes down to play with the hair on his forehead. “Yeah, kind of figured.”

“I’m just no _good_ with academia.” As though his initial admission has broken a dam, it all comes spilling out. “And I hate being made to feel stupid. I’m not. I like math, see, numbers— numbers make sense, numbers have a logic to them. But it’s not like— not rules, really, it’s intuitive. You know? Once you know the methods, you can calculate anything, so I’m good with the numbers. It’s all the rest of it, the theory, the dead people whose creepily manipulative opinions you have to learn. All of it is so set in stone, it’s… stifling.”

“So why do you still do it?” Roy questions, as Dick had expected he would. He considers the shut door shut tight in his mind, faded letters on fast-yellowing paper.

“Path of least resistance,” he says, his voice a murmur. “Because I hate to rock the boat, I guess. If I could have half your guts, Roy, baby—” He worries at his lower lip. “I feel like I was half-alive before I met you.”

He regrets saying it as soon as he does. Something in Roy’s eyes stays carefully closed, and Dick gets the distinct impression that he’s about to bolt, about to say something about— Alfred, and getting back to the guest room before dawn, probably— Dick panics, but he hears none of it in his voice, eerily casual, coy, innocent, as he blurts out, “This is my first time with a man.”

A small, hesitant smile sells it – and Dick’s terrified by how calculated each word and move is. Roy, tender heart that he is, won’t leave after that little admission. Dick wonders if he has always had it in himself to be so manipulative, and when Roy leans down to kiss him, he doubles his fervour, a wordless apology Roy probably doesn’t even realise he deserves.

* * *

“Did I make a huge mistake?” Dick says it under his breath, like he’s ashamed. “What am I saying, of course I did. God. Roy is— he’s older, and—”

“Wow. Two years. What an insurmountable age difference,” Donna says flatly. “Dick, sweetheart, don’t overthink it.”

Dick plays with the empty glass of soda he has on the bar counter. “It’s not about age,” he answers. “Roy’s so much more experienced, so much more… I don’t know. Mature. I don’t want to— what if I’m just playing _Mary Had a Little Lamb_ here? I don’t want to come across as some clingy, overbearing— some kid with a crush, you know?”

“Honey—” Donna cuts herself off with an exasperated exhale. “If one heartfelt sentence about your feelings toward him is enough to scare him off, then, I’m sorry, he probably _deserves_ to be scared off.”

“Oh, don’t. Don’t say that.” Dick tries to banish the thought. “I’m not scaring him off, am I? Saint Sara…”

“Do you hear yourself right now?” Donna laughs, fond, but incredulous. “So what do you plan on doing, hiding the extent of your feelings for him until he leaves just so you won’t need to worry about coming on too strong while he’s with us?”

Something in his eyes makes her hesitate, and her teasing smile gives way to a shocked little o-shape. “…Oh, my God. You do.”

Dick smiles, shakily, down at his glass. “I think I’m in love, Donna.”

Donna barks out a startled laugh. “Yeah,” she says, something almost terrified in her voice. “Yes, Dick, you are.”

* * *

“Quit squirming.”

“Okay, okay, do it. It’s fine, I’m ready. Do it.”

“Look, are you sure you want to? We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“Don’t be patronising, Roy, come on. Do it.”

Dick flinches at the sharp, pinprick-pain as the piercing gun finds its target, eyes squeezing shut. His earlobe throbs for a second until Roy presses cotton with some kind of liquid on it against it. “Okay?” Roy chuckles. He leans down and kisses away the tear that runs down Dick’s cheek, more from having closed his eyes so tightly than from the split-second of pain.

“Yeah.” Dick smiles. Roy gives him another peck on the cheek, and then he steps back to evaluate his handiwork.

“Your old man is going to kill me for this, isn’t he.”

“It’s fine, look. My hair is long enough to hide it.” Dick pushes a few strands forward to prove his point. “Should have bought something to wear…”

Roy snaps his fingers. “Stop the presses, I have the perfect thing for you. Wait.” And then he jogs off in the direction of his room. Dick makes himself comfortable on the kitchen counter – his seat all morning ever since Roy had motioned for him to come over from his front porch, Dick had, and he’d hoisted him up here – his fingers playing with the skin around his new piercing.

When Roy re-emerges, he has a box in his hand, decorated with sequins and random stickers. He upturns it on the counter next to Dick, and sifts through the pile of metal and coloured stones.

“This one.” Roy holds up a small, bright-blue fake gemstone. He runs the cotton over the pin at the back, and then he eases it through the hole on Dick’s earlobe. “But I wish I had real sapphire for you…”

“Oh, I couldn’t accept something like that…”

“Just the thought of you wearing it with all those fancy suits, though.” Roy grins. “You in boring monochrome fastidiousness— and then a flash of bright blue rebellion.”

Dick smiles softly. He parts his legs to give Roy space between them, and tangles his fingers in Roy’s hair as their foreheads touch and their lips exhale barely inches away from each other. “Is that how you like to think of me?”

“Which?”

“Rebellious.”

Roy’s about to answer, crooked smile against crooked smile, when footsteps startle them out of their embrace. “Roy— oh.” Oliver stops in his tracks, blinking in surprise.

Dick hides his face, self-consciously smoothing out his hair, and Roy pulls back as he clears his throat. “…Just needed some help bringing the boxes in, but it can wait,” Ollie mutters, awkward.

“It’s fine, I’ll.” Roy brushes past him for the door. Dick wishes he had waited. He hops off the counter with half a mind to follow after Roy, but then he realises that Roy would be back in a few seconds, and ends up just standing in his spot, uncomfortable. Ollie’s observant, though, and gives him a tight smile, almost in response.

“You don’t like me much, do you, Dick.”

Dick stiffens. And then he collects himself and gives Ollie a careful, polite smile in return. “Not at all, Mr. Queen, I hardly know you.”

“Kid, I was _raised_ with people who talked as pretty as that, you can cut the bullshit.” There’s no malice in his laugh, but the amusement is close to patronising. “I won’t take it personally.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You heard about me from Roy, right?” he explains, shrugging almost nonchalantly. “If you heard about me from Roy and you _didn’t_ dislike me, I probably wouldn’t trust you with my son.”

“Don’t _say_ that.” Dick and Ollie both turn around, Roy’s sudden reappearance taking them by surprise. Dick knows, he _knows_ that Ollie is the only person who can get under Roy’s skin, who can find a crack in that laidback attitude that even Bruce only ever manages to – at best – amuse, but this is something else. It wasn’t even this bad when Bruce misspoke about Ollie within Roy’s earshot. Roy’s clenched fists are visibly trembling, with rage or with pain, Dick can’t tell, and there’s so much emotion shining in his eyes that Dick thinks Roy – _Roy_ – is about to cry.

“Don’t fucking— why do you always—”

“Oh, hell.” Ollie looks aghast, and Dick thinks, absurdly, that they do this to each other, then, break each other’s masks. “I didn’t mean—”

“I am _trying_ , Ollie! I am trying _so_ hard, and you keep—”

“Keep what!? You’re still my son, am I not even allowed to worry about—”

“I came on this stupid fucking trip, didn’t I? I took Connor out when you asked, I stayed home for a whole fucking weekend while _Bonnie_ was still there, looking at me like I’m the dirt under her Louboutin—”

“Christ, what did I say!? What was so wrong with— it’s like I can’t do _anything_ right by you anymore, Roy!”

“So stop _trying_! Just stop fucking trying, okay, stop it!” Roy thunders forward, and Dick flinches when he grabs his wrist so tightly it hurts. “Dick, come on, let’s get out of here—”

And then he’s being dragged out of the backdoor of the cottage, Ollie’s calls after the two of them ignored. Dick lets Roy storm through the sand in silence; he knows Roy well enough to know, by now, that it isn’t in his nature to stay angry for very long. It takes a moment longer than usual, but, sure as sunrise, the tenseness falls from his shoulders.

Roy mumbles, “Sorry you had to see that.”

“What did he do?” Dick asks, as Roy idly kicks at the surf. He keeps his voice carefully devoid of an accusation; Roy’s unpredictable when it comes to Ollie, sometimes resentful, others fiercely, uncompromisingly loyal. Roy takes a moment to answer, hands in his pockets, staring out at the horizon.

“Sometimes I feel like I fucking _died_ and Ollie’s living with some— some ghost he’s trying to appease,” he says. “Why can’t he just _let it go_ already, you know? I’m over it. I did what I did, and it can’t be undone. Christ. He looks at me like— I swear, he looks like he’s in mourning.” A humourless laugh. “Sounds right. Mourning the perfect angel he thought I was. Easier than having to face the mess I really am.”

He sighs, and runs a restless hand through his hair. “He blames himself. He’s trying to make up for it— he’s trying, and I know that, but…”

“Bruce won’t be home until past midnight tonight,” Dick says.

Roy glances up at him, confused. Dick continues, “If you don’t want to sleep there tonight, we could smuggle you in before then.”

A slow smile lights Roy’s eyes up with a rare sincerity that makes Dick catch his breath. He steps forward and hugs Dick tightly. “…You’re a real prize, lover mine.”

* * *

It’s the connotation of being on his knees – call it a metaphor, shorthand, whatever – it makes this feel like worship. The taste of chocolate-flavoured latex on his tongue and the music of Roy’s breathless sighs above him, whispers telling him what to do and how to do it, turning into swears, into sheer exaltations about how beautiful he is, like this, how good he’s doing— worship.

At some point during, Roy cups Dick’s throat while Dick’s mouth is still full, and – reflexively, involuntarily – Dick tilts his head back by the slightest inch. Looks up. He doesn’t know what’s in his eyes, he’d been too lost in the moment to pay attention, but he wishes he could understand the naked emotion in Roy’s eyes in answer.

“The way you look at me, sometimes,” Roy whispers, after, once they’re cleaved together in bed without an inch between them. Dick’s heart races, half-panicked, half-hopeful, but Roy doesn’t continue.

* * *

“Dickie.” With a contented sigh, Dick blinks his eyes open, languid and slow. His vision is still sleep-heavy and vague, but he’s conscious enough to recognise Roy’s soft smile, hovering above his own. “Sun’s up, sleepyhead. I should go before Alfred shows up.”

“Don’t,” Dick complains. “It’s not.”

Roy chuckles. “Yes it is, look how bright it is.”

“Floodlights,” Dick insists, wrapping his hands around Roy’s shoulders, pulling him down and closer still. “They’re always shooting movies on the beach.”

“I should go.” Roy contradicts himself by leaning forward and kissing Dick on the neck. “You’ll get in trouble, baby.”

“Mm.” Dick tilts his head back to give Roy’s lips access to more. “You should…”

But they linger, inevitably, and the early hours pass in a half-hearted tug-of-war between _I’m leaving_ or _You should leave_ and intervening kisses, wandering hands. “Roy,” Dick whispers, words against Roy’s chest to make them quiet enough for there to be that slim chance that he could get away with it. “Do you like me?”

“What’s that, Pretty Bird?”

Dick lifts his head, watches Roy relaxed against his pillow. “Do you believe in love? Like, between two people? Like in the movies and— in all the songs?”

Roy hums, contemplative. “I don’t know,” he finally decides. “My father— uh, the second one— he used to say that you’ll know it when you feel it, so. I’m not sure. I’ve never been.”

“Sure?”

“In love.”

“Oh.” Dick pushes himself higher so they can be at eye level, relishing the slide of skin against skin as he moves. “I didn’t think there was a single experience in the world that I’d have you beat at.”

“You’ve been in love?”

Dick smiles, all casual, as if it isn’t a big deal. “I think so.”

Roy reaches up, cards his fingers through Dick’s hair. “And were you loved back?”

Dick shrugs. “Never had the courage to ask,” he says.

“Bet you were.” Roy half-smiles. “Everything about you is so captivating. That effortless charm, your looks, your heart. Who’d be stupid enough not to? You were. I know it— you were.”

“You’d say that to anybody, I’m not special…”

Roy whispers, “Do you want to be?”

Dick’s breath catches. He thinks it’s his heart at first, the pounding, but then Roy hisses out a swear and Dick realises someone’s there, outside, knocking on the bedroom door. Their wide eyes meet, and in the next instant Roy’s scrambling out of the sheets and slipping under the bed, Dick’s hastily pulling on his shirt. He opens his mouth, about to say, _One second_ , but thinks better of it— more believable for him to have been asleep. So he pulls the blankets over himself and waits for the knocking to persist a while longer, and then, in as groggy a voice as he can pretend, he says, “Come in.”

He watches the door-handle twisting downwards. It isn’t Alfred who walks in. “Good morning,” says Bruce, and Dick’s heart is racing wildly, hyperaware of every imagined breath that Roy could be taking under the bed. But he’s good at hiding it, and he gives Bruce a smile that he hopes passes as genuinely tired.

“You’re up early, considering how late you got in last night.”

“I suppose I was a little eager to share the news.” Bruce is smiling with his eyes, if not his lips, and holding up a piece of paper. “The penthouse got approved. It’s officially yours.”

“O-Oh.” Dick’s heart sinks, his smile wavering as he struggles to maintain it. “That’s great.”

Bruce is still giving him that look, and it’s soft, but faraway. As if to shake himself out of it, he reaches over and gives Dick a pat on the shoulder. “You’re growing up so fast, old chum.” Half a whisper, and then he’s Bruce again, that unreadable look disappearing. “We’ll discuss the details downstairs.”

“Right behind you,” Dick answers.

As soon as Bruce closes the door behind himself, Roy slides out on his back, shaking with quiet, uncontrollable laughter. Dick shushes him, but it’s bubbling up inside of him, too, and he’s caught between half-hissing admonishments at Roy, half-struggling to stay silent himself. “You’re going?” he whispers through breathless laughs as Roy pulls on his clothes.

“Not exactly.” Roy winks. Dick doesn’t get a chance to ask him what he means; Roy steps out through the open balcony doors and jumps off the low edge onto the lawn below. Dick follows, to watch him and wave goodbye, but Roy doesn’t keep walking. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he glances up, grinning, mischievous. And then he skirts the pool – in the direction of the front of the villa.

“What are you doing!?” Dick hisses, but Roy’s gone. Seconds later, the doorbell buzzes. Dick’s laughing again, rushing out of his room toward the top of the staircase. He gets there just in time to catch Roy standing at the open front door, hands in his pockets, casual as you please.

“Morning, Alfred, Mr. Wayne. Is Dick up?”

Dick has to hurry back to his room before his laughter can give him away.

* * *

“Alfie,” Dick says, idly stirring his cup of tea, “Have you ever been in love?”

Alfred doesn’t seem surprised by the question – but then, Alfred rarely seems surprised by anything. “I’ve lived a great many years, Master Richard. One cannot avoid it forever.”

Dick hums, trying to appear nonchalant. He pulls his legs closer underneath himself, on his perch on the kitchen windowsill, and continues, “How do you know when it’s love and not infatuation?”

He’s expecting another vague, cop-out answer, but when Alfred says, with a touch of nostalgic longing in his voice, “When you have shed a tear for them, my boy,” Dick glances up, surprised.

Alfred’s smiling. “Not _because_ of them, mind the difference. But _for_ them. You’ll understand when the time comes.”

Before Dick can answer, Cassandra wanders in. _Bruce says he’s done_ , she signs at him, and Dick sets his cup down, hops off his perch. “Thanks.” He pets her hair as he passes her. The doors of Bruce’s home office are wide open, and Dick waits while he finishes his phone call.

“All of the documents are ready, if you want to finalise the deed now,” Bruce says as he hangs up. Dick gives him a strained smile, nervously shuffling his feet.

“Actually, Bruce, I— there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Second thoughts?” Bruce gives him a faint smile, steady, understanding. “It isn’t too late to cancel. Don’t worry. You’re more than welcome to keep coming home between semesters, until you feel ready. Leaving the nest isn’t all that it’s made out to be, trust me.”

“Yeah, um.” Dick plays with the sleeves of his shirt. “It’s good that you said that, actually, because— I think I’m going to stay on. At home, for a while.”

Bruce nods, a little solemn. “If you’re sure. The penthouse will have to be put on the market again, it’s a pity, but I’m sure there’ll be a better one waiting when you’re ready.”

“No, Bruce, I—” Dick takes in a steadying breath. “I mean… for a _long_ while. I don’t think I want to go back next semester. Any semester.”

A loaded pause. “You want to drop out… of Harvard?” Bruce says, each word more disbelieving than the one before.

Dick nods. “I’m sorry, I know it was my idea in the first place. Well, not Harvard, specifically, but— college. I gave it a shot, and— I don’t like it, Bruce. I’m not good at what I go there to do. It always feels like a waste of time, and for a long while, wasting time was what I _wanted_ , but things are different now, and I don’t want to keep— to just keep going with the flow, a-and letting life be something that happens to me, instead of something that I actually feel… like I get to have a say in.”

Something cold in Bruce’s eyes and the downward twist of his lips makes Dick stop. “That boy put you up to this, didn’t he,” Bruce mutters.

Dick’s stomach plummets. “No! Well, Roy helped me find the courage to tell you, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while now.”

“For a while, and you never mentioned it to me?” Bruce shakes his head, unconvinced. He’s angry. Dick can hear it, seething under his words. “Something that you feel you can have a say in— that sounds more like him than you. He’s a bad influence, I’ve always said so.”

“Roy has nothing to do with this.” It’s a struggle to keep the impatience from his voice; Dick’s so, so tired of people misunderstanding Roy, who’s brave, and kind, and deserves none of it. “I’m really sorry, Bruce, but I promise you it isn’t—”

“I forbid you from associating with him from now on.”

Dick’s heart stops cold. “…What?”

“I said I forbid you from associating with him from now on,” Bruce repeats firmly. “This has to stop. You stay out late every night— in fact, I barely see your face during the day— and now it’s dropping out of college? What’s next, should I call ahead and have them ready a room for you at his rehabilitation centre, too?”

“That is _not_ something to joke about!” Dick cries, shocked and horrified. “He was struggling— you know what, this isn’t even something I should be trying to justify! Everyone’s allowed to make mistakes, to lose to their fight sometimes! If the fact that he’s a recovering addict makes you think less of him, then the problem lies with _you_ , Bruce, not him!”

“I’m trying to _protect_ you. You’re far too trusting. Too willing to see the good in everyone. It’s admirable, Dick, but there _are_ still those who can and will take advantage of that!”

“How is Roy taking advantage of me!?”

“He’s filling your head with these— these grandiose ideas that have no basis in reality, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree! There’s naïveté, and then there’s— plain foolishness, Dick. Maybe in Oliver Queen Fantasy Land, it’s acceptable to waste all your potential for the sake of some baseless concept of self-discovery, but in the _real_ world, you _need_ your education! What happened to the responsible, mature Dick Grayson that I know? You were never as— as _thoughtless_ as the other children, and I was always proud of it!”

“If I was different from the other kids, it’s because _you_ never let me be one!” Dick blurts out. This pain, that he keeps buried, has been stretched too thin for too long to suppress anymore.

There’s a dangerous, quiet pause that follows.

“We _don’t_ talk to each other that way under this roof,” Bruce says, a warning in his voice.

“Since when!?” Dick laughs, incredulous. “Oh, since Jason? So that you can pretend that we’re one big, happy, _perfect_ family— that we didn’t drive him away?”

Bruce turns white as a sheet. Like a loaded gun, Jason sits between them, impossible to address, impossible to ignore. “…When will you stop pretending that this is about protecting _me_ , Bruce?” Dick continues, voice pleading. He can see in Bruce’s eyes that Bruce doesn’t understand, and Dick has no idea how to make him.

“I will not change my mind about this.” Bruce’s lips are pulled into a tight, thin line, as if to emphasise his point. “As long as you’re living in my house, I never want to see you with him again.”

“Your house.” Dick laughs, humourless, under his breath, ignoring the sudden tightness in his throat and the burning in his eyes. “All these years, and I’m still just the freeloading orphan?”

“That’s not what I— where are you going? Dick!”

Dick ignores him, rushing past every door on the corridor, past Alfred’s concerned questioning, past the front steps, and the road, and the gate to the cottage behind the villa. Roy’s smoking on the front porch, and he glances up, surprised. “Hey, beautiful, what brings—”

Dick doesn’t want to know what kind of expression’s on his face, for it to make Roy look that worried. “What’s wrong?”

“Bruce isn’t going to let us see each other anymore.” It comes out part frantic, part disbelieving.

Roy doesn’t move from where he’s leaning against the wood of the cottage. Dick can’t meet his eyes. “Under what threat?” Roy asks, and his voice remains calm. Dick doesn’t understand.

“I— kicking me out, I think,” Dick answers weakly, an admission. Bruce wouldn’t, he’s sure Bruce wouldn’t, but—

But he would. If it was to protect himself from losing another son. He would.

“Ah. The classic _my mansion, my rules,_ huh.” Roy hums. “They say it’s not about the money, but in the end, it’s about the money.”

“They didn’t _buy us_ , Roy.”

“Who are we kidding?” Roy laughs, quiet and self-deprecating. “Come on, Dick. Team Unwarranted Trust Fund Babies, you and me, remember?”

Dick meets his eyes. “Are you really so unaffected by this?” he asks, genuinely hurt.

Roy shrugs. “Well, you here to break things off?”

Dick doesn’t _understand_. But he knows that he’s in no state to bear this, too. “Forget it,” he hisses, turning and stomping back down the front steps. He’s halfway to the gate when he hears an unmistakable swear, and then Roy’s footsteps chasing after him.

“Dick— wait!” Roy grabs him by the wrist, and swears again. “You and that— that stupid look of _actual surprise_ when I act like an asshole, I swear…”

“I do, you know,” Dick blurts out, uncaring, unafraid, after all this. “I do want to be special to you. I do.”

Roy’s hold on his wrist loosens, becomes less vice-like, and he takes the other one as well, pulling Dick closer until their foreheads touch. “They all do, Dickie— until they don’t.”

Dick swallows hard. “You’re saying you don’t want me.”

“I’m saying I’m a handful.” Roy sighs. “You’re selling yourself short, babe, acting like it isn’t _you_ who’s giving _me_ the time of day here, huh. The way you look at me, sometimes— like you think I can save you from something. Look at you, you could have anyone you wanted—”

“Clearly not _anyone_.”

Something vulnerable in Roy’s eyes, there and gone again. “I’m just saying, if you pick _me_ to be your long-overdue teenage rebellion, you make poorer decisions than I did, Pretty Bird.”

Oh. So the uncaring façade, earlier, had been Roy steeling himself for the breakup, Dick realises. He sighs, half-relieved, half-exasperated. “Roy— Bruce has literally _forbidden_ me from coming down here, and I’m down here. He’ll come dragging me back any minute— and I’m a little bit mad at you, and I don’t know _how_ to be mad at you…”

Roy kisses him on the side of his head. “I’m sorry,” he says, like he means it. “Come up to my room, beat me up with a pillow or ten if it makes you feel better—” He leans down and whispers, “I’ll do my penance, put on The Cure and eat you out good—” A chuckle as Dick shivers. “—Then we’ll talk ways to get around Bruce, okay?”

* * *

Night is falling. Dick has his head on Roy’s bare thigh, his hand hovering loosely over the side of the bed dropping cigarette ashes from the burning stub between his fingers, and a pleasant kind of rawness between his legs. Bruce hadn’t come stomping down to the cottage to get him after all, and that somehow manages to be more ominous than the alternative.

But he can’t find it in him to care, at the moment. Roy’s fingers are carding through his hair, and there is the gentle caress of still-warm air on his bare back. Besides, the muffled sounds from the kitchen tell him that Ollie’s home, and he can picture what would happen if Bruce _were_ to show up demanding to see Dick. He laughs to himself, quiet.

“We’ll get through this,” Roy promises, his hands as gentle, as reassuring as his words. “It’s not my first time sneaking around with a lover.”

“I can believe that,” Dick says, amused. And then, because today’s the day he’s decided to throw all fucks out the window, he whispers, “My brother ran away from home.”

“Tim?” Roy asks, confused.

Dick exhales and lifts his head, sitting up. He considers the cigarette in his hand – barely one at all at this point – and decides it isn’t worth it, steals the one from between Roy’s fingers instead. “Jason.” He takes a drag, breathes out. “Second eldest. You wouldn’t know a lot about him, Bruce had learned his lesson about letting reporters around his kids by then.”

“Oh.” Roy nods. “Were you close?”

Dick laughs, the thought of it still ridiculous, even then. “We hated each other.” He pauses, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “…In the way that brothers do. Which meant we loved each other, really.”

“Why’d he run?”

Dick shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know. Why do you?”

Roy takes his cigarette back, glances at the closed door of the bedroom as though he can see through it into the kitchen, where Ollie is. “To hurt him.”

“Well, if that’s what Jason wanted, he got it.” Dick smiles, wry. “He certainly got it…”

“Oh, is that what turned Bruce into such a repressed fash?”

Dick sighs. “Please, don’t. Bruce is— he’s got a lot of problems. He lost his parents in such a traumatic way, and right in front of him, too, you know. He took me in because he _understood_. It’s because we’re so close – because we were all we had, once – that he gets so threatened by my friends. By you.” He swallows. “But ever since Jason… it’s gotten worse. It’s like he’s afraid to loosen his grip on the leash he has around me, just in case I leave, too. He can’t bear to keep losing the people that he loves. That’s all it is. It’s— difficult to handle, sure, but that’s all it is.”

He isn’t sure what to make of the answering shine in Roy’s eyes. It’s half-pitying, half-introspective. “Dick,” he says, “You know— you know that Bruce isn’t emotionally qualified to be a parent, then, right? I’m not— I would never trivialise everything that he’s done for you or everything that he means to you, but— you know that the two of you aren’t _supposed_ to be on equal footing, right? _He’s_ your father, not the other way around, you shouldn’t be the one thinking about—” Roy pauses, apparently at a loss for words and frustrated about it. “Listen, Ollie’s immature in a lot of ways, too, but not like that.”

Dick frowns, lost. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Roy sighs. “I get to yell at Ollie and pick fights and get fucked up just to prove a point all I want, it would _never_ make it okay for Ollie to do the same to me. You understand that?”

“Our parents are people too, Roy.”

“See, just the fact that you think that way at _nineteen_ …” Roy laughs, humourless, sardonic. “You genuinely have no idea what I mean, do you?”

“No, but…” Dick turns away. “I don’t want you to think that he doesn’t love me, because he _does_ , I just wish— sometimes I wish—” _He wouldn’t love me to death,_ Dick thinks, pained.

“Oh, baby.” Roy pulls him close and holds him tight. “You just have way too much room in that heart of yours for lost causes like him and me, huh.”

“You are _nothing_ like him,” Dick whispers, hugging back contentedly. He passes it off as a joke immediately after – “For starters, there’s all those tattoos,” – because he isn’t sure how to put it into words, that Roy makes him feel alive and young and _free_ , that Roy had been wrong, before, Dick doesn’t look at him like he thinks Roy can save him, he looks at him like Roy _has_.

“I want you to stay over,” Roy says. “But I guess that would just be pushing it with your new prison guard, huh.”

Dick laughs half-heartedly. “Yeah, I should get back.” He and Roy get dressed with kisses in between, and then Roy escorts him out, arm around his shoulder. It used to be that having to say hi and bye to Ollie after having emerged from Roy’s _bedroom_ felt like a literal walk of shame, but Dick was used to it now. _Like that old free-loving hippie would care, anyway,_ Roy would brush it off. _If there’s one thing he would never disapprove of, it’s being open about arbitrary taboos, you know, sex especially._

Dick still isn’t sure how to feel about that – to someone who barely likes to say the word aloud, some things were and always would stay sacred – but, well.

“Bye, Mr. Queen.”

“I’m walking Dick home,” Roy adds. Ollie makes a vague, acknowledging sound— his concentration on tasting something off of a spatula that smells of strong spices and a home Dick had never known. Roy pauses at the front door, giving Ollie an unreadable look past the threshold of the kitchen opposite. He says, “Hey, I… think I changed my mind. About dinner with you and Dinah.”

Ollie glances up, startled. He blinks, then he frowns. “You feeling okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah… Dad.” Roy’s voice goes quiet at the word, and his eyes are just as soft, too. “Feeling ace.”

“…Bye, Mr. Queen,” Dick repeats, thinking he sort of understands.

* * *

The sentence, as it stands: no more telephone in his room, permission required to use the ones downstairs, no going down to the cottage or the beach for the rest of the summer, and a seven o’ clock curfew. Dick lets Bruce list them off in silence, and once Bruce finishes, he steps out of the study without a word. There had been a faint, sour-sweet smell in the air, and Dick finds it surprising that it isn’t that surprising. Liquid courage – Bruce is only human, after all, and they don’t know how to be mad at each other, either.

Dick stands in front of the mirror, tucks his hair behind his ear, slides the little piece of bright-blue rebellion through his piercing, and twists to lock it in place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued (or to be deleted, depending on your feedback ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ ).
> 
> Bonus points to whoever read this with the piano version of the theme from _Somewhere in Time_ on loop after it was mentioned. My people.
> 
> I do know that _Gender Outlaw_ was published in 1994, alas. The Italian versions of the names Montague and Capulet are Montecchi and Cappelletti, hence the Monte Cottage and the chapel thing for the villa (the Italian word for chapels is _capelle_ ). Also, phonetically speaking, if you say “Monte Cottage” real fast it sounds like Montague ~~(Ottage?)~~. The Hummingbird is a reference to the poison Juliet supposedly took to fake her death, cantarella. (The Italian word _canterellare_ means “hum” or “sing”.) Plus, you know, bird, Birds of Prey.
> 
> The property that the villa is based on: [[x](http://greekexclusiveproperties.com/property/villa-in-crete/)]
> 
> The property that the holiday cottage is based on: [[x](https://www.homeaway.co.uk/p3959877#photos)]
> 
> The tattoos on Roy’s shoulders (except more spread out and, like, colourful): [[x](http://www.tattoos-3d.com/table3/shoulder-blade-modern-tattoo-ideas-3D.jpg)]
> 
> The tattoos in the centre of Roy’s back (except blending with the ones on his shoulders): [[x](http://nextluxury.com/wp-content/uploads/inner-forearm-watercolor-coyote-guys-tattoo-designs.jpg)]
> 
> Dick quotes an essay by Francis Fukuyama titled “The End of History?”, published in _The National Interest_ No. 16 (Summer 1989), at the beginning. ~~You can take the Literature Major out of the university, but you can’t make them stop obsessively citing their sources, apparently~~.
> 
> If you liked it, please consider leaving kudos, bookmarking, and typing up a comment. You can find me on Tumblr as elderesque.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the comments that you left on the last chapter! And I’m so sorry this one took so fucking long. The verdict said to continue, so continue we shall.

Dick dreams of falling. It had started out fine— peaceful, even— floating through the air with the greatest of ease— and then the rope breaks. He tries to hold on, but it’s slippery; slippery with something— _oh, God, with blood_ —

And he startles awake, eyes flying open, taking hard, gulping breaths. There’s a disorienting moment where he doesn’t know where he is, and then reason returns, and he realises it’s just dark outside still. He slides a trembling hand over his chest, feeling his heartbeat. Breathes in, out, in, out, trying to slow it down.

The door creaks open. Dick turns his head to the side, cheek pressed against his pillow as he meets Bruce’s unreadable gaze, the light from the hallway like an ironic halo along his silhouette. If Bruce takes a step inside, Dick thinks, then they’re okay. He would be there to make sure the nightmare wouldn’t leave behind ghosts, and everything could go back to normal.

Bruce doesn’t. He holds Dick’s gaze for a second longer, and then he turns away, and closes the door behind himself.

Dick throws an arm over his eyes, swallowing hard.

* * *

“Who’s your best girl?” Dinah asks, hands on her hips, grin on her face.

Dick blinks. “Donna,” he answers automatically.

Unimpressed, Dinah sighs and turns to Roy, next to him, who has thrown his head back laughing. Roy has an arm draped across the back of Dick’s seat, and Dick can’t help but lean into it. This little rendezvous at the Hummingbird had been planned the night before like so: Roy was to leave the cottage early in the morning, make sure to be seen by Bruce or at least Alfred heading in the opposite direction from Montauk, and then take the long road to here; Dick was to follow hours later by the regular route – and so far, so good.

“Roy told me about your little predicament,” Dinah explains, continuing where she left off. “I can help.”

“Really?”

“See, Dinah’s going to be staying at ours for a while, like for about a week, maybe,” says Roy, his eyes twinkling. “To be gross with Ollie.”

Dinah nudges him. “Long story short, I need a house-sitter,” she continues.

Dick frowns, confused. “Are you letting Roy and I have your apartment? But wouldn’t it be a little suspicious if I were to accept a summer job all of a sudden—”

Dinah interrupts with a laugh. “The job’s not for you. _You_ are going to be joining Donna and Kory on their Hawaii trip.”

“I am?”

“It’s the perfect excuse,” Roy says, smiling crookedly. “You’re mad at Bruce, so you decide to go with them last-minute. Donna can corroborate your story. Meanwhile, I don’t want to be home if Ollie has company— excellent though it may be—” Pausing to grin at Dinah— “So I decide to help Dinah out, see?”

Dick turns this over in his mind. He doesn’t realise the corners of his lips are tilting upward until Dinah winks at him. “You’re welcome,” she says. “You two get your honeymoon, I get somebody to take care of Dashing. Win-win.”

Roy scrunches up his nose. “Dashing?”

“As in _through the snow_.” Dinah elbows him. “He was a Christmas present.”

“Please don’t tell me he’s a dachshund.”

“Matter of fact…”

Dick leans forward, smiling. “Thank you, Dinah. Really,” he says.

“You didn’t even ask what the catch was.” Dinah grins. “Normally, I only go home on the weekends and leave him with my neighbour, see. But I’m on leave this time and Mrs. Cruz knows it, so she won’t take him in. He’s a little bit of a wild one, but he’s also no street dog. Meaning I’m going to need the two of you to _swear_ you won’t leave him unsupervised. You got me? I don’t want to come home and find all of my furniture torn to shreds.”

Roy turns to Dick, and there’s something playful in his smile. “What do you think? Feel like being under house arrest for a whole week with me?”

Dick chuckles, nodding yes. “Romantic,” he says sarcastically.

* * *

When Dinah stands to get back behind the counter, she places a hand on Roy’s shoulder, in a friendly gesture. As he glances up at her in return, Dick catches a rare fondness in Roy’s eyes that he’s only ever seen when Roy thinks Dick isn’t looking, sometimes, or when Roy talks about his siblings back home.

“She’s cool,” Roy says, though he doesn’t really need to. “I don’t know what she sees in him.”

“Herself?”

They double over laughing.

* * *

As planned, Dick heads out to Donna and Kory’s apartment on the day they had settled on, after a fight about it with Bruce that he’s certain hurt him more than it hurt his father. He lingers out on the porch with Garth, who’d come over with Wally to say their goodbyes, while waiting for Roy to pick him up.

“It’s going to be lonely out here for a while,” Garth says with a little sigh. “Donna and Kory— and now you and Roy, too…”

“Roy?” Dick blinks, surprised. “You two talk?”

Garth frowns. “Of course.” He seems confused, and then there’s clarity in his wide eyes as he says, half-disbelieving, “He didn’t tell you…”

“Tell me what?” Dick asks.

Garth laughs under his breath, turning away from Dick to gaze out at the road. “Roy, he— while I was still in the hospital— he’d visit every morning. Without fail.”

Dick stares at him, certain Garth is making a strange attempt at humour, but Garth goes on. “He understands a lot, Roy.” In a whisper.

“But— but he hates hospitals,” Dick murmurs, half a protest.

Garth sighs. “Exactly.” He hesitates, then he places his hand over Dick’s, resting on the wooden railing of the porch. Dick notes every single sickly vein, every fragile tremble, and blinks rapidly. “He’s a good person, Dick. I thought it had to have been at least _partly_ to impress you— but he never even told you?”

“Never,” Dick answers in a hoarse whisper. That’s the moment the truck chooses to pull up to the driveway, and Dick can’t help himself, he’s _beaming_ at Roy as he parks and climbs out.

“Ready to go? Hey, sport.”

“…Talk to me like I’m a child one more time, Harper…” But Roy only reaches over and ruffles Garth’s hair, and though Garth’s pushing him away, Dick thinks he hasn’t seen him have that much pure, unadulterated _fun_ written deep in his eyes since…

“You’re _all_ children to me, I’m older. And way more—” Roy stops abruptly, catching Dick’s eyes on him. “Uh… something on my face?”

Dick all but throws himself forward, and though Roy’s arms wrap around him instinctively, Dick can feel his surprise. “Whoa, what’d I do right?” He chuckles. Dick squeezes hard.

There’s the sound of a shutter and a flash, and Donna answers from behind her camera, “You want that list in alphabetical or chronological order? Aw, that was a cute one. Kory, look…”

“Sweet, can I keep it?” Roy reaches for the Polaroid. Dick laughs and tugs him.

“Let’s go. We’ll be late.”

* * *

“Garth said…”

Roy pauses as he reaches for his seatbelt, one hand still on the door-handle he’d just pulled shut. Understanding in his eyes, and he says, “Did I overstep?”

“No.” Dick shakes his head, smiling reassuringly. “But why, though?”

“Like I said, Dick. It’s a prison in there sometimes.” Roy starts the ignition, keeping his eyes on the road. “Strangers get their hands on you most of the time, and some of them don’t know the meaning of gentle. The food sucks, sometimes you feel like the outside world was nothing but a dream. I don’t know, I guess I thought he could use a friendly face. Any face.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“He said…” Roy hesitates, sighs. “I mean, don’t take it personal, but he said he feels isolated from you guys sometimes? And he knows you love him, I swear he does, but not getting to just be with you like normal, you know, it makes him feel like he’s another world away from you.” He turns to Dick, smiling kindly. “He’s only telling me this stuff because I’m an outsider, you get that, right? Because there’s less of a chance of… fallout, from admitting it?”

Dick shakes his head slowly, turning to stare out the window. “You know, Garth, he— he told us, once, that there’s this room in the hospital where they wheel you to, and that’s when you know they’ve given up on trying to cure you.” His voice becomes barely a whisper on the last word. “He was so scared of the day they’d wheel him out. He never said it, but he was. I know he was.”

“Christ.” Roy shudders visibly. “How, um. How long until…”

Dick turns to Roy again, swallowing hard. “…That’s the room.”

Roy’s face crumples, and Dick has to look away just so he can keep his own composure. He reaches for Roy’s hand where it rests on the gearshift. “Roy— thank you,” he breathes out softly.

* * *

The rest of the four-hour drive out to Paterson, New Jersey remains uneventful. “Knock yourselves out,” Dinah says, throwing a set of keys at Roy, who catches them effortlessly. “Oh— but if you’re planning on having more fun than I care to know about all week, _please_ light the incense in the bathroom cupboard after.”

Dick coughs, forcing all of his attention on the adorable dachshund puppy nosing at his lap while Roy answers, laughing. “Don’t embarrass him, Di.”

“Thank you for doing this, really,” Dick adds, choosing to ignore that. “We’ll be, uh, mindful.”

“Don’t mention it.” Dinah grins and waves goodbye. The dog in Dick’s lap regains all of his energy the instant Dick lets him go, to stand up, and Roy sighs when he tries to chew at the leg of his pants. Dick laughs, partly amused, partly vindicated.

“Why’d you have to talk like I’m some kind of prude or something?” He asks, pretending to sulk.

“But you do get embarrassed by it.” Roy laughs. He has managed to shake Dashing off, steps closer to Dick.

“I do not.”

Roy laughs again, shaking his head. He curls an arm around Dick’s waist and pulls him flush against his own body. “Okay, alright, so you’re not a prude, you’re just— you’re old-fashioned.”

Dick has to bite his lip to keep from smiling and ruining it. “Try _classic_.”

“Nah.” Roy’s voice gets low and husky, and Dick’s hyperaware of the thumb stroking circles into the bare strip of skin between his shirt and the hem of his khakis, the subtle shift of Roy’s hips. “There’s nothing about you that’s ever been done before. Trust me.”

“I’m not a prude,” Dick repeats, if only to distract himself before he can get too weak-kneed, too quickly thanks to Roy kissing a trail along his cheek down to his neck. “I just— oh— I don’t like to make a spectacle of it.”

Roy chuckles against his skin. “Says the circus performer?”

“Well, some shows are VIP-only,” Dick counters, with an inviting smile and a teasing tilt of the head as he loops both arms around Roy’s neck. “I’ll be whatever you want me to be behind closed doors.”

“That a promise?”

“Try me.”

Roy lifts him off of the ground, kisses him deeply. And then he grins. “How about the lonely housewife to my strangely fit pizza delivery boy?”

Dick laughs so hard his stomach protests.

* * *

“Oh, she has _The Breakfast Club_ on VHS.”

“No,” Dick half-whines, peeking out of the blanket he’d wrapped around himself, curled up on the foot of the bed. He watches with some amusement as Roy hops around the room, exploring.

“Fine.” Roy chuckles as he puts the tape back in its place. “You don’t like it?”

Dick makes a noncommittal sound. “More like I don’t understand _why_ people like it.”

“It’s prime social commentary, Dickie,” Roy answers. Dick feels so deeply comfortable and warm that Roy’s voice almost lulls him to sleep as he rambles. “We’re all in detention, see. We’re all, you know, stuck— stuck following rules for no reason other than that our parents before us did, and their parents before them did. And so we must. The detention’s a microcosmic reflection of the broader social norms that the characters have to stick to in their cliques, which in itself is a reflection of their places in society at large. Bender is the only one who’s, you know, who gets it. That the only thing keeping him in detention is because some guy said so, and some guy tougher than that guy told that guy to say so. So when he’s like, fuck the rules, it— babe, are you even listening?” Roy laughs.

Dick jerks awake, but he tries to hide it. “Figures you’d—” he stifles a yawn as surreptitiously as possible, “Figures you’d relate to that one.”

“Oh, come on. I’d never talk to a girl like he does.” Roy tilts his head, reconsidering. “Unless she said she was into it.”

“A true gentleman.” Dick chuckles.

Roy gives him a mock bow, bending at the waist, one hand behind his back. “What kind of movies doth please the fair one, then, pray tell?”

Dick can almost imagine Roy flourishing a hat capped with a feather when he does that. He hides his smile. “ _The Adventures of Robin Hood_ – Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland. 1938. A classic.”

Roy straightens, scrunching up his nose. “A true gentleman, alright. Who’d have thought you and Ollie would have something in common.”

“What a strange idea…”

“Hey, look.” Roy’s pulling at something tucked between the wardrobe and the door – a guitar case with a line of yellow birds embroidered on it. “I didn’t know Dinah played.”

Determined to fight off sleep and spend a little more time with Roy, Dick sits up and stretches his arms out. “Here, give me.”

Roy passes him the guitar. He joins Dick on the bed while Dick unzips it and smiles at the sticker that reads: THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS. Ollie _has_ met his match after all, then, Dick thinks, sardonic. He plucks a few strings, checking to see that it’s in tune, and then he strums. Roy’s eyes go wide and eager. “You play?”

Dick smiles. “My parents taught me.” His hands seem to remember what he had been certain his brain has forgotten by now, and he starts to sing: _Are you going to Scarborough Fair_ …

Roy interrupts him, his face flushed. “You sing!”

“Roy…” Dick laughs. Roy’s shaking his head insistently, and it’s nice to see him less than composed, Dick muses, less than perfect.

“No, I mean, you _sing_. Not, like, yell into a mic— or, you know.”

“Is that what _you_ do?”

Roy laughs along with him. “I’m a rock artist, the art is _in_ the imperfections. Counter-culture and all that. But you— wow. What a sweet voice. All soft, like.”

“My father liked folk music,” Dick explains softly. His fingers start unconsciously playing a familiar tune: _If you miss the train I’m on_ … “He taught me some of his favourites. On the harmonica, too.” There’s a lump rapidly forming in his throat, but he smiles through it. “My mother, on the other hand…” Dick lifts his strumming hand by the slightest inch, then he goes, up-down-down, up-down-down, changing the tempo, speeding up. Roy’s mouth all but falls open.

“What _is_ that? Mexican or something?” His fingers are tapping along on his lap. “It’s almost… percussive.”

Dick laughs. “Try French-Romani.” He plucks a staccato beat that has Roy transfixed. “You’d call it _Gypsy Jazz_.”

“I’d call it _fucking awesome_.” Roy grins. “I’m a drummer.”

“Isn’t it?” Dick muses, bittersweet. He’d taught Jason this, once – another, brighter lifetime ago. He combines his mother’s techniques and his father’s songs to play a brand new version of _Mrs. Robinson_. It’s a song that sounds happy but isn’t, and Roy seems to understand. When Dick’s fingers slow and then stop, he leans forward and kisses Dick on the cheek.

“You must have loved them very much.”

Dick smiles through the stinging in his eyes, nodding because he can’t trust himself to speak. Roy lifts his feet up and onto the bed, shifting behind Dick so he can wrap himself around him, chin on Dick’s shoulder, holding tight. “Sing me a song, little birdie.”

Dick huffs out an amused breath. He thinks about his parents, and home, wherever that is, and Roy, who understands. Then he starts playing again.

… _Oh, dream-maker_ … _You heartbreaker_ … _Wherever you’re going, I’m going your way_ …

* * *

“—And so he says that 1989 is the year that history ends. There’s no cause left to fight for,” Dick continues. “I thought it sounded so… fatalistic. It made me sad, just a little.”

“Really?” Roy hums. “I think it’s bullshit. There’s always something you have to fight for.” He sounds bitter about it. “Wouldn’t it be nice, though? To stop and rest for a while? Nothing sad about that.” He sighs. “But it _is_ bullshit. All the stuff that these scholars up in their ivory towers who have never seen the real world come up with is.”

“Oh, and you know better than the experts, Mr. Home-schooled?” Dick teases, arching an eyebrow.

Roy’s not in the mood for it. “I think it would be peaceful at the end of history.”

“I think it would be boring,” Dick counters.

* * *

“Come on, it’s not that hard.” Roy laughs. “Just think of something that inspires you. Something that makes you feel so powerfully that you just _have_ to put it down on paper or you’ll implode.”

Dick sighs, letting go of the neck of the guitar. “It’s no use. I can’t. _You_ write something and I’ll play it, I promise.”

“Come on,” Roy insists. “Okay, look. Start simple. You like me, yeah? You think I’m cute?” He rests his chin on his interlocked fingers and bats his eyelashes, making Dick laugh. “So, how would you describe the way I look if you were trying to impress me?”

 _But I’ve been doing that since we met,_ Dick thinks and doesn’t say. “I don’t know— you have red hair? I like red hair.”

Roy doesn’t laugh at him. “Okay, and…?” He prompts.

“In… in the Middle Ages…” Dick can feel his cheeks turning warm from Roy’s attention, but Roy still doesn’t tease. “They used to, um— they thought that red hair and green eyes were the most common features of witches. That sounds stupid.” He laughs wryly. “It’s what I thought of the first time that I saw you.”

“It’s not stupid. Stop putting yourself down.” Roy hums, smiling to himself. Then he snaps his fingers. “ _You, with the eyes like magic_.”

Dick blinks, impressed. “Oh.”

“And?”

“And, what?”

“And the— what else?” Roy leans closer, grinning. “Something else that you like about me.”

“Your… smile?”

“Okay. _And the smile like_ …?”

Dick’s eyes fall to it involuntarily, the roguish curl of his lips, the almost vulpine effect from his chipped canines, the overall charm of it. “…Sin,” he whispers.

Roy claps. “Beautiful.”

Dick sets the guitar down, trying and failing to ignore the heat spreading across his face. “Okay, no more. You’re just fishing for compliments now.”

Roy laughs. Kisses him, deep, lingering.

Later, when Dick steps out of the shower after their latest exertions, he finds Roy asleep on the bed, a balled-up piece of paper close to falling off the edge. Dick picks it up, about to throw it— but something stops him just as he reaches the trashcan. Curious for some inexplicable reason, he smooths it open, and finds a single, hastily-scrawled line.

_You, with the eyes like magic and the smile like sin. Is there something you believe in?_

* * *

And so it goes, on and on and on again. Dick gets so caught up dancing in the storm that is Roy Harper that he never notices the end, prowling.

* * *

It’s the 5th of August, 1989. A Saturday. Hindsight is cruel and will note that Dick brings all the rest of it upon himself, when the first sentence that comes out of his mouth that morning is, “I’m bored.”

Roy turns around from where he had been brewing them coffee to give Dick a smile. Dick leans against the doorway to the kitchen, marvelling on a tangent at how that smile is his to keep.

“Already? You just woke up.”

“No, I mean, in general.” Dick half-laughs, half-sighs. “I didn’t think it would be this dull, being cooped up in one place.” Garth comes to mind, which hurts a little. He busies himself with the new morning routine he’s established over the week, reaching for the box of cereal and then the dog food from the upper cabinet. He’d feed Dashing first, not wanting to eat until Roy starts, too.

Roy’s pouring out two mugs of sweet-smelling coffee— they both like their milk and sugar generous. “Our circus boy isn’t used to anything but wide, open spaces?”

Dick stands, having finished filling the dog bowl, and chuckles. “Your pretty bird isn’t used to being in a cage.”

Their hyperactive pup interrupts, running into the room, chasing some imaginary creature in circles, and then finally settling by his food long enough to notice it. “Good boy.” Dick smiles, leaning down to pet him. Roy never does, tired of always getting his hand nipped at. _You’re a baby whisperer and an animal whisperer, you actual angel,_ he’d said with an exasperated smile.

“How bored is bored, babe?”

“I wish we could go out,” Dick answers. “I know we only have two more days, but then we’d—” _Have to wait a while before we get another chance to meet._ It goes unsaid.

“Okay.”

Dick blinks. “Okay?”

Roy grins. He skirts the island counter in the centre of the room, and reaches for two sets of keys from the top of the fridge. “Okay,” he repeats, dangling them.

“Roy.” It comes out stern. “Dinah said—”

“Oh, come on, Dickie. We’ll lock up proper and let Dashing have the run of the house for a couple hours, what’s the big deal? We’ll be back before you can say _rampage_.”

“We don’t know the neighbourhood—”

“I do.” Roy waves a hand, dismissive. “I get around a lot. In more ways than one, hah.”

“But—”

“Dick.” Roy playfully cups his face, squeezing a little. “It’s just you and me, away from home— away from our fathers. What does the Richard Grayson who doesn’t have to follow Bruce’s rules want, huh? What does the Richard Grayson outside of detention want?”

Dick’s heart is starting to beat faster. “…Okay,” he says, half a whisper.

Roy grins. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Dick repeats, shoving him backward with a partly exasperated, partly fond smile.

Roy raises both hands in a triumphant gesture, then lets them fall, laughing. “I finally get to show you off.”

* * *

“You know how to hotwire a motorcycle. Why am I even surprised that you know how to hotwire a motorcycle?”

Roy, freshly showered and dressed, leans back on his hands where he’s seated on the edge of the bed and laughs. “I’m curious, what’s the wildest thing you’ve ever done?”

“This comes pretty damn close.” Dick pulls on one of Roy’s leather jackets, checking that it doesn’t look embarrassingly oversized in the mirror – which, miraculously, it doesn’t. He watches the reflection of Roy standing and coming up behind him, placing his hands on Dick’s shoulders.

“Heady, isn’t it?” Roy says, musing almost. “The line between nervousness and excitement is so, so thin— and it’s the same kind of adrenaline rush, you know?”

“You’re evil.” Dick shakes his head. “You’re smug, and you’re evil.”

Roy laughs. “You love me.”

Dick smiles to himself. “I do,” he says softly. Quicker than Roy can process it, he changes the subject. “What’s the wildest thing _you’ve_ ever done?”

“Me?” Roy considers it, humming. “When I was seventeen I made friends with one of the working girls in the neighbourhood. One day, I was bored and she needed the money, so I paid her to, uh. Teach me some things.”

“Seriously?”

Roy presses closer to Dick, grinning against his cheek. “What, it doesn’t show?”

Dick laughs under his breath, feeling self-conscious all of a sudden. “I’m sure, but I don’t have much to compare it to.” He says it as it is, a simple fact and not a bad thing, because he honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. After a moment to muster up the courage, he leans back against Roy and whispers, like a secret, “From my… relatively more limited experience… you treat me so well, Roy, you’re so good to me.”

Roy nuzzles his neck. Smiles. “God, you’re tempting. Come on. If we don’t get going now, we never will.”

They lock up, and then Roy leads the way down to the garage below the building, confident as though he has known the place for ages. The scooters and motorcycles are parked by a chain-link fence, helmets propped up on it like shrunken heads on pikes. “Which one’s Dinah’s?” Roy asks, and Dick, ignoring his nagging conscience, nods at a black-and-silver one at the end of the row.

Roy looks around to make certain they’re alone, kneels down, and gets to work.

“I’ll drive,” Dick says, leaving no room in his voice for argument. “I know I’m a safer driver than you are.”

“And here I thought he liked me.” Roy chuckles. “So the prince can ride a bike, huh. Really can’t judge a book by its stuffy cover.”

Dick kicks him.

“Should have known that you’d know how to handle something thick and hot and powerful between your legs, though—”

Dick kicks him again. Roy ducks, laughing. “Okay, we’re good.”

The engine hums into life. Dick yanks the helmet from Roy’s hands, pulling it on. “Shoulders, not hips. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.” Roy grabs another, random helmet from the fence. Sensing Dick’s look of disapproval even through his visor, he shrugs. “What? We’ll return it.”

Dick sighs, chuckling to himself. Roy climbs on behind him, places his hands on Dick’s hips. Gets them swatted away for his trouble, and moves them to his shoulders. “Hold on,” Dick murmurs, and drives.

* * *

And it isn’t that the whole day goes horrifically wrong, because it doesn’t. In fact, it’s kind of perfect. They buy lunch from a cosy bodega, talk for hours about everything and nothing at a park that’s historic for some reason according to a random person who’d spotted them as tourists and wanted to sell them a guide. Roy tempts Dick to sneak into a local art gallery and waxes poetic about some Van Gogh reimagining, and when Dick teases, he says – somewhat sardonically – that tragedies are drawn to tragedies.

Then the pull of the end of the day seems to hit him, and Roy suggests a bar that he knows of nearby. It’s more along the lines of what Dick had expected, so he follows without complaint.

“A gay bar?”

“You fucking bet, a gay bar, I didn’t get to so much as hold your hand all day long.”

Truth told, Dick’s excited, having never even seen one before, but he hides it, feigning only vague interest. “What if I get carded?”

Roy scoffs. “Trust me, as long as you can see over the counter, nobody cares. Come on.” And he leads them through an alley toward a Federal-style building with a sign that says, _Otherworld_ , above an arrow pointing down to the basement.

“Otherworld?” Dick wonders aloud.

“Yeah, you know.” Roy chuckles. “Land of the fairies.” He checks his watch as they step past the little gate and then down the stone steps— mumbles, “What the hell, it’s not even ten.”

“Too early, I’m guessing.”

“Mm, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing now that I think about it— bigger crowds equal bigger chances of people getting handsy, and with that face of yours… speaking of, stay close to me, okay.”

“I can take care of myself, Harper.” Dick huffs. Roy grins and slides a hand around his waist.

“Stay close anyway. Just so everybody knows you’re with me. Gives me something to brag about, yeah?”

“Oh, you devious, smooth-talking—” The muffled thumps of the music getting louder and louder as they approach the entrance to the basement drown out Dick’s hissing. There isn’t a line at all, except for a half-drunk couple in front of them, and Dick and Roy aren’t even asked for identification; Roy just flashes a smile at the bouncer and says, “Tell Gracie Roy Harper’s here.”

A moment during which the bouncer disappears and Dick’s thoroughly kissed under the shadow of the overhang, just because, and then the metal door is yanked open again and they’re waved inside. Dick’s eyes immediately have to adjust to the low light— in fact, the place isn’t so much _lit_ as allowed to exist under both warm, orange light and shadow. The music that’s playing is a shouty kind of rock, and there’s a barely perceptible, thin screen of smoke blanketing everything. It isn’t like dance nights at the Hummingbird, when Dinah would play disco, or, if she was feeling adventurous, rap; and where multi-coloured lights doused the floor from the ceiling.

The atmosphere here is more mosh pit than discotheque, more punk and anarchy than ABBA and dancing.

There _is_ a crowd. Dick doesn’t want to know what Roy’s definition of _bigger_ is.

“Harper!” Dick stares at the woman making her way toward them, dressed in a crop-top that shows off a serpentine tattoo on her belly and a piercing through its button. She has dyed red hair that’s even messier than Roy’s, sun-kissed skin that’s lighter than Dick’s, and almond-shaped bright eyes. Her short sleeves show off well-muscled arms, and her grin is contagious.

“Hey, Grace.” Roy hugs her.

“What brings you to town? Hey, who’s this? New fancy?” Grace eyes Dick with a half-curious, half-amused look. “Little clean-cut for our Roy-toy here, aren’t you, pretty thing.”

Dick opens his mouth to answer, but Roy beats him to it. “I think it’s more like _I’m_ too scruffy for him. Gracie, Dick Grayson. Dickie, Grace Choi. Roy, drink.” His last words accompanied by an agile hand swiping the can of beer from Grace’s.

“I haven’t even touched that!” Grace’s look of indignation gives way to an exasperated smile. “You never change, you bastard.” She turns to Dick again. “Grayson, huh. _The_ Dick Grayson?”

“Pleasure to meet you, too.” Dick smiles. Inwardly, there’s a spike of anxiety that assaults him, insisting, too late, that he’d been foolish to have made an appearance in public while hiding from Bruce. Roy seems to have pieced it together as well, because he subtly pulls Dick closer and says, “Grace is cool, baby, she won’t tell. Right, Grace?”

“Aw, it would be a crime to. You really talk like that, hon? _Pleasure to meet you, too?_ ” Grace chuckles. “I’m telling you now, you’re too good for this guy.”

“He knows,” Roy answers, laughing along. Dick notices that it rings too loud to be genuine. Then he notices that he’s noticing when Roy’s laughs are genuine. His heart aches.

“Right, welcome to the Otherworld, favourite haunt of bi-tri-polysexuals and gender anarchists of all persuasions this side of the country. Make yourselves at home, kids.” Grace winks. “Place is dead right now, but give it a minute, it’ll liven up.”

“Come on, I’ll find us a corner.” Roy steers Dick toward the back of the room, where a short wooden partition between the bathroom and the bar divides two leather couches. Grace follows, so Dick tries to make conversation.

“How do you two know each other?” He asks, genuinely curious.

“Me and him?” Grace blinks. Then she and Roy exchange a look that Dick can’t decipher, and Grace chuckles. “I was one of his guardian angels back in the day.”

“Gracie.” Roy’s smiling, but Dick hears distinct bite in it, a warning. “You’re drunk.”

“From beer? No, I’m just buzzed.”

“You’re high.”

“It’s only pot.” Grace rolls her eyes. She leans toward Dick, almost conspiratorially. “He likes having someone to wake up next to, you know. Needs it, in fact.”

“ _Thank you_ , Madam Choi. Can we get drinks, or something?” Roy sits on the end of the leather couch, ignoring the couple making out on the other end— which Dick is also trying to do, but isn’t succeeding quite as well. “You all good to wait here, Dickie? I’ll be right—”

“Don’t you leave that precious face to the wolves, Roy Harper, I’ll go,” Grace chastises. She turns on her heel and swaggers away.

“Why am I being treated like a child tonight?” Dick protests half-heartedly. Roy laughs, amused.

“Oh, Alice. You’re in Wonderland,” he croons. He wraps an arm around Dick’s waist, his free hand thumbing Dick’s chin, just under his lips. “You’re a baby.”

Dick smiles. He pauses, places his hand on top of Roy’s, which is cupping his cheek. “She meant that you two dated, didn’t she. Grace.”

“ _Dated_ … is a strong word.” Roy laughs under his breath.

“She kept you company, then.” Dick doesn’t let him deflect. “Made you feel less alone?”

“Fucked-up way to do it, if so.”

“Everything’s relative.”

“She isn’t the only one who did.” Roy shrugs. The gesture is nonchalant, but Dick can sense the malaise underneath.

Dick averts his eyes. “…Does?” He ventures, his voice quiet.

“Did,” Roy insists, tilting Dick’s face up so their eyes meet, and his are gentle. “Did.”

Dick’s heart skips a beat. He breathes out a startled laugh. _You mean it?_ He wants to ask, but Grace interrupts, back with two cans of beer which she tosses at them. “Oh, I don’t—” Dick starts to say, but then he stops. Considers it.

_What does the Richard Grayson outside of detention want?_

“—Thank you,” he finishes instead, and takes one, ignoring Roy’s puzzled look.

“So where are you crashing while you’re here? Some hotel?” Grace asks as she squeezes herself between them and the other couple.

“Friend’s,” Roy answers between sips.

“Well, why didn’t you say so, you goof?” Grace huffs. “Let’s ditch this place for yours. I’m bored, he’s bored— you’re bored, aren’t you, Grayson?”

Dick, who’d been making a face at his first taste of beer— carbonated soap-water, more like— glances up. “No, I’m…”

“We’re bored,” Grace repeats firmly.

“I’m not going to throw a party at somebody else’s apartment, Gracie, _no_.”

“That’s a first.” Grace snorts. “Who said anything about a party, anyway? It’d just be me and ’Nissa and them all, that bunch. No drugs, not even pot, just beer and wine and a good time. Huh? Be a doll.”

Roy looks uncomfortable, so Dick reaches out and takes his hand. “Dance with me, treasure.” Not a lot of others are, but Dick doesn’t mind, the song is perfect— Just Like Heaven by the Cure, which already carries some… _pleasant_ memories for the both of them.

“My hero,” Roy says, grinning as Dick loops his arms around his shoulders, sways.

Dick smiles back. He presses himself closer against Roy’s body, welcomes Roy’s arms circling around his waist and his back. Buries his head in the crook of Roy’s neck, and whispers, “Count on it, Roy.”

“Can I?” Roy whispers back. “No matter what?”

Dick pulls away from him by the slightest inch, leans up so he can press their foreheads together. “Do I seem like the fickle type to you?”

“No.” Roy releases an amused breath.

“I keep my word,” Dick repeats. Roy kisses him.

He doesn’t stop until the song ends and Dick’s flushed red from making out in public, low light or not. Roy pulls him along to the bar counter, and orders himself another drink while Dick finishes his, for the sake of finishing it. “Maybe we should call it a night,” Roy says, musing. “Unless you’re still bored. Think I want you to myself again now.”

Dick laughs. “I’m not. Let’s.” He waits as Roy places his bottle on the counter, searching his pockets for cash— and then he stiffens as he suddenly feels hot breath against his ear.

“Hel- _lo_. I haven’t seen _that_ ass here before.”

Dick throws a glare over his shoulder at the large man who’s trying to crowd him against the bar counter. Roy, for his part, is pulling Dick closer, smiling coldly. “Sorry, guy. He’s unavailable.”

The man leers. “Come on, Harper. I heard, I know you share.”

“No, not this time.” Roy’s smile is growing thinner by the minute. “Tough luck.”

“Well, let’s hear what _he_ has to say about—”

“Do you not speak English?” Dick bites back. “I’m not interested.”

Speaking up only seems to have the opposite effect on the stranger, who redoubles his efforts to corner Dick. “Aw, don’t be like that. Give me a chance to convince you.” He forces Roy’s hand away from Dick’s wrist, putting his considerable physical advantage to use, meaty fingers crushing musician’s ones. Roy hisses in pain.

Dick sees red.

The next thing anyone knows, the man is laid out on the floor, people are making a ruckus around them, and Dick’s knuckles are throbbing. Roy is tugging insistently at his wrist, saying, “Come on, babe, come on—” and Dick follows, running out the back door with him.

“—Never seen anything like—” Roy’s laughing and gasping for breath at the same time as they finally stop. “Twice your size— fucking _clocked_ him, right on the jaw—”

“Are you okay?” Dick asks, frantic. He takes Roy’s hand, turns it over twice, inspecting.

“Am _I_ okay? I’m fan-fucking-tastic, Rambo.” Roy barks out a laugh. “Relax, it’s not even sprained. Where’d you learn to throw a punch like that?”

Dick colours, embarrassed. “Can’t you?”

“Uh, no thank you. I’m a lover, not a fighter.” Roy shakes his head, chuckling. “Damn, you weren’t fucking around when you said you could take care of yourself, huh.”

“I know I said he was an angel,” Grace’s voice calls from behind them, “But I didn’t mean the fire-and-brimstone kind. Yet here we are.”

“We’re not in trouble, are we?” Roy turns to her.

“No, but you owe me.” Grace’s eyes are twinkling as she jabs a finger into Roy’s chest. “I paid him to scram and not make a thing out of it, so now you _have_ to let us see your digs.”

The fact weighs on Dick’s conscience, and he touches Roy’s arm. “It’s only fair, isn’t it, Roy?” he says, voice placating. “No one will make you do anything you don’t want. Right, Grace?”

“Yeah, pal, we just want to hang out,” Grace agrees.

Roy sighs. “Fine,” he relents. “Don’t let it get out of hand.”

* * *

And it doesn’t, not really. Not in the way that Dick suspects Roy meant. Sure, Grace’s definition of _just a handful of people_ is a little— a little generous, and though she did keep her word about the drugs, there’s a _lot_ of drinking involved. Dick’s had a second beer and now feels a lot more on the light-headed side than the sleepy one, so he doesn’t accept any more.

But Roy hasn’t been drinking since the bar, either, and now they’re sprawled out on the living room couch— Roy with his arms spread and his legs spread and leaning back all content; Dick with his legs up on the cushion, curled up under Roy’s arm, clinging to his side like a burr; and it’s kind of… it’s nice, actually. Someone had the idea to turn off the lights and throw open all of the windows, so the apartment is lit by moonlight and city-light only. By now, the music playing is no softer than a hum, and there are already people asleep on the floor around them.

Dick watches the shadows against the wall opposite, of the last two or three couples awake and swaying to the music with heavy eyes. It’s the 6th of August, 1989, about two in the morning, a Sunday. He’s vaguely aware of the conversation Roy is having with someone on the armchair opposite.

“Roy is the only— only punk I know,” says the other person, slurring their words, “Who doesn’t worship Sid Vicious. Ask him why.”

“Why?” Grace’s girlfriend, Anissa, asks, humouring them. Grace is fast asleep on her lap, and Anissa is running her hands through her hair as she whispers softly.

Dick feels Roy sigh in the way that means he’s also likely rolling his eyes. “It’s unwarranted, all the stuff they credit him with. Birth of punk, my ass. As if there was ever one definitive moment when it happened. Janis Joplin has more of a right to that claim. Hell, _Bob Dylan_ has more of a right to that claim— when he went electric and all. Fuck the Sex Pistols, punk is more than just aesthetic. Just because you scream _anarchy_ into a mic over and over again with a bunch of loud guitars and drums backing you—”

“Nah, come on. The real reason.” Roy’s friend interrupts him. “Think we all ag— _ree_ ’bout American punk over those hyp—hypocrites ’cross the ocean— I meant that. Other thing. The thing. The girlfriend.”

Roy stays quiet for a moment. “He murdered her,” he finally says.

Dick glances up, curious. “Nancy?” He asks, for the life of him unable to recall her last name, considering all he knew of the matter came from the recent movie. “But wasn’t that never proven in the end? Didn’t the police have other suspects as well?”

“They shared a hotel room, where she was found, _stabbed_ , Dick,” Roy says, and Dick’s taken aback by the sudden edge in his voice. “There’s evidence that he abused her before then, too. He murdered her and then he murdered himself, okay, and— and fucking _Hollywood_ decided that it was the pinnacle of tragic love stories, the best thing since Romeo and fucking Juliet.”

Roy sounds upset, like it’s _personal_ , which leaves Dick utterly confused and Roy’s friend in hysterics, like it’s the funniest thing they have ever witnessed.

“Roy…?” Dick ventures, concerned and wide awake now.

“Talking about how intense their love was and all that—” Roy laughs without humour. “Bullshit. They were a pair of heroin addicts, believe me when I say that they already _were_ in love, and not with each other.”

“You sound hurt, baby,” Dick whispers, reaching out for Roy’s other shoulder, essentially hugging him. He notices Anissa surreptitiously turning the other way out of the corner of his eyes— any other occasion, he would have been too self-conscious for this, but the alcohol ignores his inhibitions.

“It’s just…” Roy clicks his tongue. “If there’s anything left to believe in, I _want_ it to be love, you know? I want it to be the One, the soulmate, that whole package. I want there to be someone— anyone— who would want me and I would want them and it wouldn’t _be_ about sex or not having to wake up all alone in an empty penthouse or even a checklist of things that you consider ideal in a partner you’d spend your whole life with. I want there to be something unquantifiable, inexplicable, but undeniably _real_ , a pull from one soul toward another. But what if that’s all there is to it? What if it’s something so powerful, so violent, it can only logically end with you bleeding out on the bathroom floor or you with blood on your hands and no choice left but to die too?”

Dick stares at him. Roy’s not making sense, not really, on a surface level, his words as tangled up as his thoughts must be. But Dick understands, somehow, and it makes him want to cry.

“If you can’t tell me that _tragic romance_ is an oxymoron, then what’s the point?” Roy asks, his voice quivering, ever so slightly. “How can I believe— how can I want something like that? I _know_ tragedy. Intimately. All my life. It’s fucking overrated.” In a whisper, “I don’t _want_ to keep hurting. Dick, what if that’s all there is?”

“No,” Dick answers hoarsely. “No, Roy. It isn’t.”

Roy chuckles wryly. “Right, I forgot. You’ve been in love.”

“I think,” Dick corrects him, though it sounds feeble even to his own ears. “And it isn’t like that. It isn’t painful. I mean, it is, but not— like that.” Dick silently curses himself for not being half as eloquent as Roy, but when he looks, there’s stark and rare vulnerability in Roy’s eyes as he leans forward like he’s desperate for an answer.

“How does it feel, then?”

Dick closes his eyes, and really considers it. “There _is_ a violence to it,” he admits. “But not the kind that wants to hurt, or to get you hurt. The kind that makes you feel— like you could do it all, anything, for the person you love. You could move mountains. You could lay the whole world at their feet if they only asked. You could take on an army, alone, unarmed, to defend them.” He smiles softly. “But that’s not all there is to it. It’s gentle, Roy. It’s quiet. And tender. Like— like when your mother sings you to sleep while you’re down with the flu. You know?”

Roy lets out an amused breath. “You can paint anything like it’s touched by sunlight, I swear. How are you so… guileless? The only thing you’re missing is a halo.”

Dick touches his arm. “It feels like going home.”

Roy meets his eyes. His are serious as he clarifies, “Felt?”

Heartbeat.

“Feels,” Dick answers. “Feels.”

“God.” Roy’s voice breaks on the word and he pulls Dick on top of him, kisses him hard. “God, Dick, I want— you’ve got to let me—”

“Yes,” Dick whispers, nodding frantically as he straddles Roy’s thighs and wraps his arms around his neck; he can blame this on the alcohol, too, the truth be damned. “Yes, Roy, yes…”

And he leans down and kisses him, presses his lips against Roy’s lips and his tongue against Roy’s tongue, and Roy’s pulling him impossibly close, and the sides of the jacket Dick’s wearing ( _his_ , Dick thinks, and kisses Roy harder) are hiding what Roy’s hands are doing like a pair of curtains. Roy hesitates after unzipping Dick’s jeans, a question in his eyes as he breaks their kiss, and Dick takes a moment to note that Anissa had slipped away with Grace and the other person, he hadn’t noticed when. Everyone else in the room is out like the dead.

He presses closer, like permission, like prayer. So close that they can’t even kiss anymore, cheeks pressed against each other instead.

Roy’s left hand is gently caressing his thigh. Roy’s right hand is sliding up the leg of his boxers, and then his fingers— Saint Sarah, his fingers— Dick buries his face in Roy’s neck and just rocks against them, breathing heavily and leaving wet marks on Roy’s shoulder as Roy whispers against his ear, calls him every unholy name he doesn’t mean like they’re high praise.

And Dick obliges, takes him three knuckles deep. Grinds down _just_ right, gasps, soaks Roy’s fingers.

Roy removes his left hand and reaches for Dick’s lower back, steadying him, holding him in place as he trembles through it. The fingers of his right hand stay right where they are, still moving, making slow, gentle circles, until it starts to feel uncomfortable and Dick shifts his hips to let him know. They slide out.

“What about—”

Roy shushes him, shaking his head as he zips Dick back up and straightens his jacket, pulls him down for another kiss. Dick is boneless in his arms, pleasantly sore and spent, and can’t protest, though he can feel the evidence that Roy wasn’t exactly unaffected by it against his pubic bone.

Roy cups the back of Dick’s head with one hand and the small of his back with the other, leading him down onto the couch like he’s putting a child to sleep, gently, ever so gently— and it _clicks_. This wasn’t meant to be an exchange. It’s a thank-you gift.

 _Why is it,_ Dick wants to ask, _that you think you’re undeserving, when half the time you make me dizzy,_ breathless _with how I feel?_

“My treasure,” he whispers instead, reaching out for Roy’s face hovering above his, caressing his cheek with his thumb. Roy smiles without meeting his eyes.

He pulls the afghan on the back of the couch down to cover them both, holding Dick close enough that they aren’t likely to roll over and fall. Moments pass in cosy silence, and Dick drifts in and out of sleep until he hears the little smack of Roy parting his lips. Glances up, waiting to hear it, whatever it is, with a patient little smile.

“What did you mean,” Roy asks, under his breath, almost, “When you said it’s painful, but not?”

Dick considers it. Sometimes being multilingual involves searching for words to move from one language to the other like how you’d try to untangle a bunch of knotted wires. “It’s a good pain,” he tries at first, and then gives up. “In French we call it _la douleur exquise_. The exquisite pain.” He hesitates. Places his palm flat on Roy’s chest, just below his heart. “It hurts here.” Then he slips his fingers through the spaces between Roy’s, on his left hand, squeezing gently. “And here. When you want someone that bad, but you can’t be sure if they want you, too.”

“How can that be exquisite?”

“It’s the agony of the possibility of rejection,” Dick whispers, “Combined with the hope of the possibility of being loved back.”

“If it’s all about possibilities, why not just confess?”

Dick watches him for a quiet moment. “You tell me,” he says at last.

Roy looks away. “So it’s like— like wanting someone who’s completely out of your league. Completely different from what you’re used to.”

“It’s exactly like that, yes.” Dick laughs under his breath, rueful.

“All sounds so masochistic.”

“But Roy,” Dick mumbles, sleep insistent on dragging him down now, “When you say _masochistic_ , you’re already implying pleasure.”

“I just don’t get why I— why you would put yourself through that to gain nothing.”

“Yeah, _because_ you don’t understand.” It’s no use fighting to stay awake now, and he hopes he still makes sense. “It hurts. Like that.”

* * *

He’s yanked back into the world of the living by a throbbing headache and the sound of Roy’s voice snapping, “Out. Get out. _Now._ ”

Dick sits up, startled. It’s not directed at him, he realises, but that doesn’t get rid of the unease and confusion, either. He’s paralysed on the couch, afghan pooled around his waist, watching as Roy goes from one sleeping body to the other, shaking and pushing and biting out, “ _Up._ Party’s over. There’s the door— move.”

Behind him, Grace is pacing the room as far as the cord of the telephone glued to her ear will let her. Anissa’s standing by the table it rests on, all but worrying at her lip.

Dick finds his voice. “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

“Can’t find Dashing.” Roy turns to him for a fraction of a second and averts his eyes, goes back to shoving the last of the stragglers out the front door. Dick stares.

“What do you mean you can’t—”

“Roy. My buddy agreed to broadcast an announcement through his station.” Grace hangs up the phone. “Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”

“Does your friend have any albums around here? Pictures of him?” Anissa asks. “I can get some flyers out in like an hour, tops.”

Dick gets off the couch and reaches for one of the photo frames they’d tucked away along with some other breakables for last night’s crowd. “Here,” he says, handing it to Anissa, one anxious eye still on Roy, who’s visibly distressed. True to her word, she nods at Grace, once, briskly, and then she strides out of the room.

“Yeah, offering whose money, though?” Roy runs a hand over his face. Dick can hear that it’s rhetorical; Grace can’t.

“I’m sorry, Roy, but if we don’t—”

“No, do it, I didn’t say don’t do it.” His hands slip down to his neck and he tilts his head up toward the ceiling, blinking several times. “Thank you,” he adds, like an afterthought.

“I’ll pay,” Dick says. “I’ll pay. Offer as much as you want.” And he _will_ , whatever Bruce thinks— surely he has a right to at least that. If not, he can take the consequences. For Roy. He can.

“Forget it. No way.” Roy shakes his head. “It was my stupid idea to let them open all the windows.”

“But I was the one who wanted to go out in the first place—”

“I said no, Dick.” It’s meant to sound firm, but with the sigh Roy releases, it comes out tired instead. “Ollie will cover it. For her.”

 _Oh, no._ The way Roy’s voice goes quiet at Ollie’s name makes Dick’s heart sink. “Roy, don’t be stubborn. Please.”

“It’s not like Ollie won’t find out, anyway,” Roy answers dully. “I appreciate the thought, babe, but don’t make things worse between you and Bruce for my sake. I’m not—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head. “Thank you, but no. It’s not on you, _bił hinishnáanii_.”

Dick doesn’t know what the word or words mean, and worries for Roy’s state of mind if he’s slipping into his native— it’s the familiarity, isn’t it, Dick reasons, it’s comforting. He wouldn’t know, has no idea what _native_ would mean to him. “Roy…”

“You want to take another turn around the street?” Grace suggests, hand on her hip. “He can’t have gone that far. We could have missed him earlier.”

“Dick and I have to pack up and get going soon.” Roy shakes his head. “We’re supposed to be meeting up with our friends at the airport by around noon, latest.”

Right, Donna and Kory would be waiting, Dick remembers, concerned. “There’s still some time.”

“We’d be cutting it too close.” Roy sighs. He gives Grace a tight smile. “But thanks for offering. Let me know if anyone calls, okay?”

Grace nods once in understanding and reaches for her jacket off of one of the couches, pulling it on. “Sure will. Don’t you worry your pretty little heads about it.”

As soon as she leaves, Roy sinks down onto the floor, groaning as he drops his head into his hands. “Shit. When Ollie finds out…”

“Can’t you just blame it on me?” Dick offers, kneeling down beside him. Roy makes a noise of frustration.

“It’s not that, God, you don’t get it.” Click of the tongue. “I’m not in trouble.” Roy turns away so Dick’s hand, hovering over his face, can’t reach it, and stands up. “Let’s just pack, okay?”

* * *

So the trip ends the way it began— like a fever dream. All the walls that Roy had allowed Dick to see behind in the intimacy of the small apartment seem to have shot right back up, and though Roy’s amiable and chatty as ever, Dick aches for the closeness they had built then, instead of this manufactured performance of friendship.

He doesn’t bring it up, partly afraid to be proven both wrong and paranoid and partly to sustain the hope of that very possibility. But he catches the reflection of Kory holding Donna in her arms in the backseat of the truck through the rear-view mirror, and swallows hard.

* * *

Roy gets off a little ways from the holiday cottage, letting Dick take the wheel. They kiss, but nothing else. “When can we meet again?” Dick asks, trying and failing not to sound desperate.

“I’ll let you know,” Roy promises, but somehow, Dick doesn’t believe him.

Still, he smiles. “Let’s plan at the docks again, okay? Like last time.” Roy doesn’t answer, so Dick leans forward and kisses him again. It’s chaste, because Roy keeps his lips closed and still.

 _Was any of it real,_ Dick wants to ask, to give in to the lump in his throat and hiss it past hot tears. _Did I dream all the things I thought you were saying?_

Had it been about the sex, had Roy gotten what he wanted and grown bored? Heart racing at the thought, Dick gathers up his courage and shifts his kiss to Roy’s cheek, and then he whispers a dirty promise for _next time_ against Roy’s ear.

Roy’s answering half-a-grin doesn’t even reach his eyes, is so blatantly fake that Dick’s almost insulted. “I’ll hold you to it,” he answers.

_Say it. Say Pretty Bird._

Roy doesn’t. He leans across toward the backseat window and exchanges goodbyes with Donna and Kory instead. Then he waits for Dick to start up the engine and drive away, before he starts to head in the direction of the beach and the cottage— and Oliver— beyond.

* * *

“Did you have a good trip?”

“Bruce, I can’t. I can’t do this right now,” Dick snaps. He hadn’t noticed Bruce on the couch, or he never would have used the parlour stairs in the first place. He’s exhausted, and confused, and wants nothing more than to sleep off his splitting headache at the moment.

Bruce turns to face him, and the genuine surprise in his expression— there and gone again— tells Dick he misunderstood. “I wasn’t being sarcastic.”

Dick’s cheeks feel warm. He’s about to apologise, but of course Bruce has to ruin the moment, his eyes catching the glint of metal on Dick’s ear; he’d forgotten to untuck his hair. “Is that—”

“ _Yes,_ it’s a piercing, God.” Dick groans. “I’m nineteen, Bruce, I don’t need your permission.”

“Am I not entitled to knowing what goes on in your life anymore because you’re growing up?” Bruce returns calmly. But his even tone only makes Dick more defensive, somehow.

“I don’t understand why you always make a big deal out of everything I choose to do that doesn’t fit your idea of your perfect son. Well guess what, I’m _not_ perfect. And I realise that because they’re gone, you idealise your parents beyond reality, but _families_ aren’t meant to be perfect. We’re not natural.” With that, Dick rushes up the stairs, trying and failing to push out thoughts of Roy and Oliver from his mind and his still-aching heart.

Bruce’s voice, heavy enough to make him feel vaguely guilty, still reaches him in the hallway. “I tried, Alfred.”

“So you did, Master Bruce,” Alfred’s voice answers. “So you did.”

* * *

He sleeps away what little remains of the rest of the afternoon, and well into the evening, too. He does get up at some point to discover a cloche-covered plate of food waiting for him on a low table by the bed, manages to stomach a quarter of it, but drifts off again while trying to find the will to take it back down and face any of his family.

A little hand shakes him awake again hours later; Dick blinks the sleep from his eyes, confused as he glances straight into the eyes of his sister. “Cass? What…” He squints at the clock opposite the bed, lit by a sliver of moonlight. “It’s past one in the morning, kiddo…”

 _The phone was ringing,_ she signs. Dick frowns, sitting up.

“I don’t hear a thing.”

Cassandra shakes her head. _I picked up. It’s for you._

“You picked up?” Dick blinks. Would the other person still be on the line, then? Cass is nodding in answer to the previous question— _Was downstairs_ , she signs. She doesn’t elaborate.

Dick frowns, pulling the blankets back and swinging his legs down. “Okay, thanks. You should go back to bed.”

He leads her by the hand back to her and Tim’s bedroom, spared from having to ask her what she was doing outside of it in the first place when he finally notices the cup of water in her hand. She always had been silently independent, hated to ask for help. Still in a sleep-addled daze, he mumbles what he hopes is an intelligible _goodnight_ and turns for the staircase.

Whoever it was had to have hung up by now, Dick reasons, but it’s against his nature not to ascertain. He reaches for the phone.

Muffled singing greets him. “ _Hi, hi, hi, beautiful Sunday—_ ”

Dick’s heart skips a beat. “Roy?” he asks in a loud whisper, not daring to believe it.

The singing stops. “Dickie! Baby! I was starting to think you weren’t there.”

His voice is over-cheerful, over-enthusiastic— he’s not even within _reach_ of sober, Dick realises, alert. “What’s going on? Do you know how late it is?”

“I sure do. That’s why I’m calling.” Roy laughs, a carefree sound. “Hey, come pick me up? I don’t think I can drive. I mean, I did throw up a while ago, but I don’t think I should risk it.”

The thought of Roy driving drunk— Dick’s head feels light. “I will. Where are you?”

Roy slurs out a short address in Montauk, the site of a house party right now, apparently; Dick hangs up and hurries upstairs again, grabs the nearest jacket and pair of boots he can find, runs back down, into the kitchen, swipes the keys to Bruce’s Lexus off a hook by the fridge.

“Master Richard?”

Dick freezes with his hand on the handle of the backdoor. Alfred has turned the kitchen light on, and is standing at the doorway in his nightclothes, looking shocked, confused and worried at the same time. “Alfie, please,” Dick begs. “I have to go, or someone could get hurt. Please, I’m so afraid he’ll get hurt, and I think—” Swallowing hard— “I think I’m all he has right now.”

Whatever’s in his eyes convinces Alfred. “Go,” he says softly. “I shan’t wake Master Bruce.”

“Thank you,” Dick hisses, desperate gratitude in his voice. He rushes out the door, into the garage, into the car. He isn’t reckless enough to waive the speed limit beyond what he’s confident he can still control, but it’s tempting.

The lights and loud music of the house in question are soon within sight. Dick parks, climbs out, rushes in. The party’s already starting to die out, clearly; and one person Dick bumps into points at him like he recognises him, confusion in his face, then shakes his head as if to convince himself he’s seeing things, turning away again.

Dick finds himself at the foot of a staircase, trying to think of where to go— where Roy would most likely be. He sets a foot on the lowest step. A pair of warm, familiar arms wrap around him from behind, and Roy’s voice, husky with an emotion Dick can’t place, says, “You came for me.”

Dick swallows. He turns, pulling away from Roy’s embrace. “You smell like a brewery.”

Roy laughs, rocks back on his heels. Once he starts, he doesn’t stop, and— half-impatient, half-exasperated— Dick pulls him by the arm outside of the house and into the passenger seat of the Lexus waiting.

“What were you thinking, Roy? If no one had been there to answer your call—”

“’Cause you promised, didn’t you?” Roy answers, still chuckling under his breath. “That you would be my hero.”

Dick gives the horizon ahead a tight smile as he drives. “I thought… maybe you were mad at me,” he admits under his breath. “You seemed so distant, before.”

“Why would I be mad at you?”

“I don’t know. Dinah’s puppy. Something else, I don’t know.”

Silence for a while, and Dick’s about to check if Roy has fallen asleep when Roy sucks in a breath and whispers, “Wasn’t mad at you, angel. Could never be.” He breathes out, the slight tremble in it obvious. “I was mad at myself. Dick, could we— I don’t want to go home, could we…”

Dick frowns at him, concerned. “Was it Oliver? Did he do something, is that why…?”

“The party?” Roy chuckles, low and self-deprecating. “I never went home at all, actually. No, I just— felt like it.”

“I’m getting better,” Dick confesses, “At telling when you lie.”

Long pause. “I needed… to disappear for a while. Make my mind shut up. ’Cause it was, it was just, kept going on and on, you know, about— God, how I could have been so— stupidly careless, and— and Dinah _trusted_ me. And about… about how I don’t deserve that, people’s trust, and I don’t deserve—” Deep breath— “The way you look at me.”

Dick blinks hard, his grip on the steering wheel tightening. “So you tried to push me away. Oh, Roy. That’s a huge leap to make, you do realise that, from one small mistake to… that.”

“I didn’t really know anyone at that party, to tell you the truth, I just figured that, if I walked far enough, I’d find one. Bars over here are so _responsible_ , you know, they kick you out after too many. No one cares at a party. Especially when no one knows you.” He laughs; it’s forced. “I love places like that, big cities, huge crowds— you could just get lost, and no one would care.”

“Roy.” Dick cuts off his senseless rambling with a soft whisper. “Don’t hide, my treasure. Please don’t hide. I’m listening.” _I care._

Another laugh, this one scornful, bitter. “It’s only ever a small mistake,” he says, “Until you keep making it, and then it’s a problem, and then _you’re_ a problem, and then it’s—” He pauses for a steadying breath. “…Out of the tribe, out of the house…”

“Roy—”

“How’d you get Bruce to let you leave the house?”

Dick hesitates, pities, lets him have his change of subject. “I didn’t.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Roy snapping his head back to the profile of his face from the view— what’s visible of it— outside. “You _snuck out and stole his car_ to come here!?”

Dick laughs, wry. “If I’m supposed to take that to mean that there isn’t one person in your life who would cross deserts and brave storms when you call them, Roy…” He turns and smiles. “You have one now.” His voice goes quiet, like he’s sharing his deepest, dearest secret. “There is no _out of my heart_ that you won’t choose for yourself. And even then, I—” He swallows around the sudden lump in his throat— “Even then, I think I’d still keep a room for you. Just in case.”

Roy looks sick. And then he lurches forward like he _is_ sick. “Stop. Stop the car.”

Heart racing, Dick does, and Roy runs out, onto the beach, throws up violently. Dick opens the glove compartment and rummages through it, Bruce always keeps— yes, it’s there— he jogs out, water bottle in hand, lets Roy finish and gives it to him. “I’m sorry if I scared you.” Dick averts his eyes. “It’s just— it isn’t easy to pretend not to care when you’re _hurting_ and I care _so much_. I’m sorry.”

“Scared?” Roy makes a sound like a startled laugh. The waves behind him mirror the vacillation in his eyes from incredulity to pain to incredulity again. “Scared? Dick, I _want_ what you offer me so bad it physically hurts! I have wanted nothing more than to belong— to somebody, anybody— but don’t you get it, don’t you see? They want me, but they won’t _keep me_. Nobody does. Not, not even you will. Not once you see— once you get to know the real me.” He shakes his head. “ _This_ is the real me. Not the romance-fantasy rebel who rescues you from your tower and takes you places you’ve never been, damn it. The miserable, drunken loser you’re going to have to _search the gutters_ for someday if you want a future together!”

Dick flinches. He doesn’t know what to say, watching, helpless, as Roy paces the sand, agitated. “I can’t go in there like this,” he hisses. “I can’t face Ollie like this.”

A thought occurs to Dick, and his eyes shoot up. “Roy, does he… hurt you?”

Roy stops pacing. He turns to Dick, laughs in a short and bittersweet breath, and turns back to the ocean. “…No. No, he doesn’t.” Up-and-down bob of his Adam’s apple. “And if he sees me like this, I can’t keep pretending that he does.”

There’s such a vast, fathomless melancholy in his voice, that Dick steps forward and wraps his arms around him, buries his head in between Roy’s shoulder-blades. Roy’s hand, tentative, drops down to cover his. “I’m not drunk enough to talk about Ollie.” Roy chuckles half-heartedly. Beneath his palms, Dick can feel Roy’s chest rise and fall in a faltering way, and he squeezes tighter.

“No one to hear but me and the ocean, baby.” A whisper.

And now his breathing is definitely trembling with an effort to hold back something else. “I’m tired of doing this,” Roy whispers. “I’m so tired. It hurts to watch him blame himself for everything wrong with me, treating me like some fragile fucking thing, so I get mad, I get frustrated when he does it, but then I—” He laughs, and it’s bitter. “I just turn around and prove him right. I just keep disappointing him, and I’m _tired_ , Dick, I don’t want to hurt him anymore.”

 _Oh._ Dick feels something hot fall onto his hand, and there’s an immediate, answering sting in his own eyes. “I haven’t been seeing it,” he says, under his breath. “Bruce and everyone— it’s just been accepted, without question, and—”

Roy makes a humourless sound. “I know. It’s easier to think of it that way. A neglectful parent and a wild child. It’s neater.”

“But the truth is more complicated than that.”

“The truth is that he did more harm with the things he _didn’t_ do than the things he did.” Dick can feel him swallow. “The truth is, that I was at my worst when I was missing him, not hating him. I— God, I just want things to go back to normal. I just want it to be like when I was twelve again. That’s what this trip was about, to find… whatever it is we lost, but I _know_ we can’t, because I see it in his eyes every fucking day. I’m not his little boy anymore. I’m all the mistakes he ever made. I make him sad just by _existing_ , and—” Hitched breath— “And I still, I _still_ fuck up.”

Dick’s crying now, his tears making a mess of Roy’s jacket, and a sniff gives him away. Roy turns around, startled. “Hey, what— why are you crying, what did I say?”

“It’s not _you_ , dumbass.” Dick shoves him half-heartedly, wiping his eyes on his sleeve and forcing out an embarrassed laugh. “I’m not crying because of you, I’m crying—” _For you,_ he realises, which only makes the tears return. “I’m crying because you’re crying.”

Roy flushes. “I wasn’t crying.”

“God, _so_ not the time for machismo.” Dick shakes his head, half-laughing even as he swallows down sobs and furiously dries his tears. “How can you be so blind to yourself, Roy?”

Roy’s helping him, a gentle hand running beneath his eyes, across his cheeks, and he keeps his averted as he laughs without humour. “How can _you_ look at this mess and see anything different than what I do, how are _you_ still here?”

“You have a big heart, and you’re kind, and brave, and _beautiful_ , and rather than change all that, tonight has only strengthened it for me.” Dick puts all of his emotion into his voice.

“You’re crazy.”

“Makes two of us. You deserve the world.”

Roy presses his lips against Dick’s, chaste and brief but full of meaning. “I think I have it.”

Dick takes the hand resting against his cheek and kisses the back of it. “Tell me this won’t end with the summer, Roy…”

“Run away with me, then.” Roy smiles, small and vulnerable. “We’ll buy a cottage like that one, except less pretentious. Paint it blue as your eyes. And no surrealists, we’ll put up a Van Gogh.”

Dick smiles back, bittersweet, as the tears well up again. “I want to. God, I want to. But I won’t be the one who makes Bruce go through that again, I’m sorry.” He hugs Roy. “These last couple of years, I have done _nothing_ but try to be as not-Jason as possible— not that it ever worked, not that he ever stopped loving a ghost over me— but I can’t stop now. I think I’d break him if I tried.” Roy makes a soothing motion with his hand across his back. “Besides, I don’t think you want to do that to Oliver either, do you?”

“No,” Roy answers hoarsely. “It’s good to dream, I guess.”

“Let’s go home,” Dick whispers. “Let’s go home. I promise not to leave until we get there.”

Roy pulls back, and nods. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. Opens them again, and slaps his face with both hands. Then smiles. “Being an adult sucks ass.”

Dick threads their fingers together, smiling back softly. “I thought you liked to suck ass.”

“ _Damn._ One week with me and he’s vulgar now.” Roy’s laugh is finally genuine, and the most beautiful sound Dick has ever heard.

* * *

“ _Roy._ ” There’s helpless relief in Oliver’s voice, and Dick decides that he likes him better when he’s not acting invulnerable. “Where have you been!? Dinah said you were going to be back around last night, now she’s gone back to New Jersey with that other girl, and she wouldn’t tell me why, I thought something happened—”

“I’m fine. Dinah’s fine, it’s her dog, he’s missing.” Roy averts his eyes, and he sounds half-embarrassed, half-guilty. “We, uh, we put out a reward, but the money— you’ll have to— if it’s okay with you—”

“It was my fault, Mr. Queen,” Dick cuts in before Roy can protest. “I was careless.”

Roy gives him an incredulous look, but Dick squeezes his hand, warning him not to contradict it. Oliver turns from one to the other, frowning, and then he shakes his head, amused.

“Okay, the puppy love thing is cute and all, but Roy smells like regurgitated alcohol and you don’t.” He sighs as Roy opens his mouth to say something. “No, I don’t need an explanation. I’m just glad you’re home, alright? Look, Roy…” He rubs the back of his neck, visibly uncomfortable. He’s not used to this, Dick realises, and his heart hurts for Roy as everything wrong between them finally clicks into place with that one fact. “I understand that you’re a very… independent… young man, and you need your space, but—”

“But you worry, I got it, I got it.” Roy feels warm, Dick thinks, smiling. “I’m sorry, okay? I— look, I promise I won’t disappear like that again.”

Apparently this isn’t a normal response, because Oliver is so caught off-guard he doesn’t even answer. Roy turns to Dick, to say goodnight and goodbye, Dick assumes, and he gives him a soft smile as he leans down. He whispers, “It hurt so much, seeing you crying.” Then he pulls back, that rare softness still in his eyes, and waves as he heads for the hallway.

Dick’s heart feels so full, he thinks he could burst.

Before he can take his leave, Oliver gives him a scrutinising look. “Well. That’s not usually how that conversation goes.”

“Roy loves you very much, Mr. Queen,” Dick says, his voice quiet. “And… I think I’m starting to realise that you love him, too, but he’s so forgetful when it comes to this. He needs reminding.”

Oliver huffs, amused. “You trying to say I’m bad at the reminding?”

“I think we all are, with how often he needs it,” Dick answers tactfully. “But it’s worth being mindful of. Don’t you think?”

Just as Oliver’s eyes on him start to feel uncomfortable, Oliver turns away, chuckling softly. “You’re a strong one, huh. …Good.”

“I’ll, um. I should get going, Mr. Queen. Goodnight.”

“Hey, kid.” Dick pauses at the door, turning. Oliver’s smile is more genuine than he’s ever seen it before. “My friends and family call me Ollie.”

Dick nods, his cheeks heating up. “Right.”

“And Dick?”

“Yes?”

Oliver’s eyes are twinkling. “If it means anything to you, he’s never kept anyone else around this long before.”

* * *

He can’t help the conspiratorial little smile he shares with Alfred as their eyes meet over the breakfast table the next morning. “Did something good happen?” Bruce asks, arching an eyebrow.

Dick thinks back to Alfred waiting for him at the kitchen door when he’d trudged up to the villa last night, helping him sneak back into his bedroom. “No, nothing much.”

“What a light in your eyes, Master Richard,” Alfred says, once Bruce finishes his tea and returns to his study. “I don’t believe we’ve seen it since you were a child.”

“Is there?” Dick laughs self-consciously. “I’m just happy.”

“I wish I could say that I’m relieved to hear that, my boy,” Alfred answers, a pitying look on his face, “But you _are_ implying that you haven’t been so.”

Dick starts. “No, I— Alfie, you and Bruce have been so good to me, and— I have my friends, I don’t have the right—”

“Never mind.” Alfred’s voice is gentle. “You’re happy now, and that’s all that matters.”

Dick’s smile turns small and bittersweet. “There’s only two weeks of summer left.” He has about one more week with Roy, and then— and then what? They’ll figure it out, he tells himself. They will. “What should I say if Bruce asks me to pack? I really don’t want to go back there.”

Alfred sighs. “Whatever else you may believe, child, know that Master Bruce _loves_ you. He only wants what’s best for you.”

“What _he_ thinks is best for me,” Dick mumbles. “Alfred— do you think I’m being ungrateful?”

“I think there ought to be no such thing as gratitude or ingratitude among family. There are some things in life you’re meant to take for granted,” Alfred answers. “But, if you don’t believe me, then believe that whatever debt you owe Master Bruce for taking you under his wing, you have paid back a hundredfold with your smiles, and your laughter, and your kindness.” He smiles at him briefly. “Master Bruce was a tragic man before you came along.”

Dick shakes his head. “You always talk about it like I was some angelic creature that healed him, but it’s not true.”

Alfred blinks. “Why— what makes you say that?”

“Because Jason left, and he was sad again. And I was _right here_ , but he was still sad again.” Dick swallows.

Alfred gives him a long look. “Oh dear,” he says at last, his voice quiet. “I do believe Master Bruce and I have made a grave mistake in presuming that you are… as invulnerable as you seem.”

Dick brushes it off with a laugh. “Ignore me, I’m— I’m fine.”

* * *

It’s the 7th of August, 1989, about half past three in the afternoon, a Monday. Dick’s playing with Damian in his room, rocking his cradle back and forth, while Damian tries to keep his balance, chubby hands wrapped around the wooden frame.

When it comes, it comes without warning.

“ _Dick._ ” The muffled shout echoes through the window, and Dick turns around, surprised. It’s Roy’s voice, he realises, and a split-second after, remembers that Bruce is home. He rushes out to the balcony, leaning forward, anxious.

Roy’s standing beneath the balcony next door, Dick’s bedroom. “What are you doing here?” Dick hisses, but even through the worry he can feel his heart leap, excited to see him again.

But the look on Roy’s face quickly silences it. He jogs over to the other balcony, his face ashen as he calls up, “Dick, I’m leaving.”

Dick stares. “What?”

Roy climbs up the pillar and onto the balcony. Up close, his eyes look feverish. “Dinah left him. She _left_ him, Dick, she got together with Barbara in New Jersey, and— I guess she didn’t want to tell him to his face, so she phoned. Ollie’s in a real state, he doesn’t want to stay here one more second. We’re leaving _now_. Right now.”

“…Now?” Dick repeats it slowly, like it can’t be true. He’s shaking his head without even realising it, and doesn’t stop until Roy cups his face and kisses him hard.

“I’ll call you,” he promises, frantic. “You can write— fuck, I don’t know where I’ll be staying—” He’s holding Dick’s hands so tightly it hurts. “I’ll write. I’ll write as soon as I can.”

They kiss again, deep and desperate, and Dick doesn’t want Roy to stop even if their breaths run out. “Oh, God, you’re really leaving…”

Roy nods, forehead pressed against Dick’s, pain written all over his face. “Dick, I— I-I think I’m— with you, I—”

“I know.” Dick hugs him tightly, blinking hard. “I know. Me too. From the start.”

Roy pulls back and kisses him one last time. A car horn in the distance makes his head whip around, and he gives Dick a mournful look, and he leaps off the balcony onto the lawn. “I’ll call!” he repeats.

Dick wants to scream something back at him just to release the pain in his gut, but everything he wants to say terrifies him. “ _Thank you,_ ” he settles on. For coming. For staying. For existing.

“Dick?” Bruce’s voice behind him, half-confused, half-concerned. “Were you just talking to—”

“Roy’s gone.” The words sting, they’re unbearable. He re-enters the room, brushing past Bruce without looking at him. “Roy’s gone, so let it go, okay? We can stop fighting now. He’s gone.”

Damian, abandoned on the cradle, is crying, he realises vaguely. He picks him up and shushes him, moving almost in a trance. “…Dick…” Bruce is reaching out for his shoulder, Dick can tell. But the hand stops before it can actually reach him, clenches into a fist, and falls away.

Then Bruce leaves, too, shutting the door quietly behind him. “Don’t cry, Demi,” Dick whispers, bouncing Damian slightly. “Please don’t cry.” Shuddering breath. “Stop crying, stop crying…”

And he’s not really talking to Damian anymore.

* * *

He tries, he really tries. He puts on a brave face (at least he hopes it looks like it), and smiles when spoken to (when he can), and eats (a little), and sleeps (a lot). But every day that drags on without a letter or a phone call drives him deeper into an all-consuming numbness that’s simultaneously deadening and unbearable. His dreams are now full of warm touches and blinding grins, and they’re all worse than his nightmares.

 _Missing_ doesn’t capture even half of the pain. Mourning, maybe, grieving. Despairing.

Anger sets in, briefly, on the fourth— maybe the fifth, the hours blur together lately— day, and Dick finds himself hissing at a worthless photograph in his hands, “You can’t just come here and make me different and leave. You can’t just leave and expect me to go back to a life without you. I don’t know how to be that person anymore. You killed that person. You killed him.”

But there had been too much happiness between them for the anger to last, which is unfortunate because, in its twisted way, it had made it a little more bearable.

The worst part is that he has no one to turn to, no one willing to help ease the pain. There’s a tiny light of hope for the first few days. When Wally shows up to the villa, uncharacteristic anxiety wrinkling his childlike features, and climbs into bed with Dick and holds him tight, Dick had thought he’d found— if nothing else— comfort.

But then Wally opens his mouth and says, “Aw, Dickie… I knew it, I knew it would end like this…” and though there’s genuine sympathy in his voice, Dick feels cold inside.

Bruce is worse. He’s kind for as long as he thinks Dick is physically sick, even if his attention is half-awkward, half-grudging, but then it becomes clear that whatever’s wrong with Dick is hidden somewhere deep inside him that no doctor can reach, and his concern turns into frustration.

“Dick, stop this. You can’t mope forever,” he’d said, finding Dick’s dinner plate untouched yet again, angry mostly, but pleading, too. Dick hears it.

“I loved him,” Dick had admitted, a whisper. “I loved him, Bruce.”

Bruce had stared at him. “You don’t know love,” he’d finally answered, an indecipherable emotion clouding his voice. “You’re too young.”

Dick hadn’t argued then, doesn’t argue now, can’t find the strength to— he just never brings it up again. When Bruce notes that it’s about time to start packing, he packs. When Bruce wonders aloud why college makes him so miserable now when Bruce had wanted him home back then and _Dick_ had insisted otherwise, he mumbles out an apology.

He plays with Tim and hangs out with his friends and takes Cassandra to piano class. He spends hours with Damian close to his chest and helps Alfred with work in spite of his protests.

And at night, he curls up in bed, sobbing into the pillow. Wakes with a splitting headache, stares at the bags under his eyes with only the vaguest idea of doing something about them, then can’t bring himself to care enough.

Rinse and repeat.

* * *

There’s a phone call one night. It’s not Roy, it’s Donna.

“Garth,” she says, and with that one name in her trembling voice, she shocks Dick out of his malaise. “Garth had a seizure, they’re re-admitting him, it’s bad this time, Dick, what do we do—”

It makes an audible snap, the dam breaking.

* * *

“…Will you help me find Jason?”

Barbara almost spills her coffee, eyes shooting up to meet his incredulously. Dick turns away, tapping at the countertop in an erratic rhythm. He watches Dinah talking to a pair of customers on the other end, waiting for Barbara to say something. She doesn’t. He turns to her again, repeats insistently, “Babs? Will you?”

“What—” Barbara seems to find her voice again. “Dick, it’s been— almost two years now…”

“It takes seven years for a missing person to be declared legally dead,” Dick answers. “It’s not impossible yet.”

Barbara shakes her head, like she’s trying to physically convince herself she’s seeing and hearing things. “Where is this coming from, all of a sudden?”

“I was just thinking about it.” Dick shrugs, lips pursed. “Something never sat right with me, about that whole mess. I mean— I _talked_ to him, you know, the night before? I passed by his room. Said, _sweet dreams, Little Wing._ Heard _goodnight_ back. It was so— so _normal_. How do you go from that, to _missing_ the next day? How does that just happen?”

“Dick…” Barbara reaches out and touches his arm, rubbing, aiming to comfort. “It _does_ just happen sometimes. You missed the signs. We all did, honey.”

“That’s the thing, I don’t think we did.” Dick makes a frustrated sound. “He hadn’t been fighting with Bruce, I’d have known if he had. And he definitely hadn’t been fighting with me, we used to fight so much, it was memorable when we didn’t.”

“Maybe it was because of a lot of reasons. All piled up, you know?”

“Yeah, but what was the trigger?” Dick insists. “That’s all I want to know, I don’t want to bring him back, I just want it to make sense, that’s all. _Please_ , Babs.”

She shifts her glasses in a nervous tic. “What can I do? Dad closed the case, you know that.”

“Because Alfred asked him to.” Dick fights the urge to bite at the nail of his thumb. “Because Bruce was literally going insane, the more they kept coming up empty.”

Barbara shakes her head. “You make it sound so clear-cut— it wasn’t. They were already coming to the conclusion that Jason didn’t want to be found. Giving up was inevitable, or it would have just been a waste of resources.”

“ _Why_ would a kid taken off the streets by a _billionaire_ not want to be found— not want to stay in the first place? _Why_?”

From the shocked look on Barbara’s face, Dick guesses he had accidentally raised his voice, and consciously lowers it, apologetic. “I just want to understand.”

Barbara gives him a long, pitying look. “Alright,” she says at last. “Alright. I’ll help. What do you want me to do?”

“ _Thank_ you.” Dick beams at her. “The files are on public record now, but Bruce is still… hovering… for some reason. You think you can look them up for me? I know your dad’s retired now, but I’m sure he still can—”

“Yeah. Sure, no problem.” Barbara shrugs. “Meet me here when you get back from seeing Garth tomorrow.”

Dick feels a rush of relief crowd his chest. He nods. “I will.”

* * *

Garth is weak, but still braves a smile and a feeble voice to contribute to their conversation. He can’t handle more than a few visitors at a time, and Dick, Donna, and Wally have taken to going to the hospital in shifts.

If he gets discharged this time, it won’t be a good thing, they’re told in a small voice by Tula. Dick wishes he were as strong as her at first, then wonders if she cries herself to sleep, too. Cries so much she could turn into a puddle. He’s still thinking about it when he walks past the _closed_ sign into the Hummingbird.

Barbara is not there.

Bruce is.

Dick stiffens. Watches, helpless, as Bruce gets off his barstool and straightens his coat. “What’s all this about Jason?” he asks, and his voice refuses to betray what he’s thinking. Dick can’t find his own, his mouth opening and closing uselessly, not even when Barbara emerges from the backroom.

Her eyes widen. “Dick,” she says, and wheels up to him, takes his hands in hers. “I’m sorry, Dick, I didn’t know what else to do. You weren’t— you’re not thinking straight. You two should—”

“Thank you, Barbara. I’ll take it from here.” Bruce never takes his eyes off Dick.

Still, she whips around, eyes sharp. “Look, whatever this is about, don’t be an asshole. He’s clearly going through—”

“Just go, Babs.” Dick whispers. “Just… just go.”

She gives him a pained look. “I’m sorry,” she repeats, and then she wheels out of the door, shutting it behind herself.

Dick feels faint. It must show on his face, because the stern look on Bruce’s morphs into alarm, and he strides forward, guides Dick to one of the barstools. “What is going _on_ with you, lately?” he asks, and it’s almost begging, his voice. “You barely eat, you’re losing sleep, and now— this?” He shakes his head. “Why would you want to dig this up again?”

“I didn’t mean for you to find out,” Dick answers weakly.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Bruce insists. “What is it that you _want_ , Dick?”

“I don’t know!” It comes out louder than he means it to. “I don’t know, Bruce, I have everything I _should_ want, after all, don’t I?” He stands. “Look, fine, I’m sorry, let’s just go home—”

“No, I—” Bruce stops him by the hand, sighs. “Alright, I— may be going at this all wrong. It’s just— you’ve never been like this before. I don’t know what to do. How to help.”

The rare honesty is what gets him, in the end. Guilt overwhelms him, forcing him to sit down again as he wipes at the burning in his eyes with the tips of his fingers. “I’m sorry,” he says again, meaning it this time. “I— I don’t mean to burden you with my problems. I’m _trying_ to be okay, I swear I’m trying—” Hard swallow— “But I don’t think I remember how…”

“Burden me?” Bruce frowns. “Dick, I’m your father.”

Dick smiles bitterly. “Yeah, and you’re also… not as well as you pretend to be.” He stares at his lap. “I know to be careful with you. I always have.”

Silence for a while, and it’s loaded. “Why did you want to find Jason?” Bruce asks again, his voice gruff.

“I don’t know,” Dick repeats under his breath. “Closure, I guess. And I thought— I thought maybe, this time, I could honestly tell him— I understand.”

“Understand what?” When he doesn’t answer, Bruce turns away. “Understand what, Dick?”

Dick closes his eyes. “Why he left.”

The sound of Bruce sucking in a sharp breath. “If this is about Roy…”

“Is it?” Dick shakes his head. “I don’t know anymore. I miss him. So much it hurts. I’m scared about Garth. I… I miss Jay.” He buries his face in his trembling hands. “I’m just _so tired_ of all this shit happening— that I don’t want to happen, that I can’t control. Over and over again.”

Bruce places a tentative hand on his shoulder. “I had no… idea,” he says huskily, “That you… Dick, you didn’t even cry when we found out Jason had run away.”

“Because you needed me to be okay.” Dick swallows. “You were falling apart, and you needed someone to be okay.”

Bruce’s hand stiffens. “But you weren’t.”

“I tried to be.” Dick takes a steadying breath. “I tried so hard to be. But the house just got so… suffocating, without him around. I kept imagining that I would— would maybe round a corner, in the hallway somewhere, and see him again. And when it never happened, I—” He doesn’t bother wiping away the tear that escapes him, sniffing as he plays with the tips of his fingers to avoid meeting Bruce’s eyes. “And Damian had barely just arrived, he needed us, too, but you were… sick, and— I thought I could help instead, but I also…”

“So you left,” Bruce says, like he’s arriving at an epiphany. “You left for college. It wasn’t out of the blue, you were— overwhelmed.”

Dick nods, guilty. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, his breath hitching.

Bruce is staring at him like he’s never seen him before. He tears his eyes away abruptly, like it burns him. “Dick, when I— when I said to you that you’re too young to know what love is…”

Dick glances up, confused. Bruce’s expression is so serious, it scares him.

“Is that the kind of love you meant, when you said you were in love with Roy?” Bruce meets his eyes. “Do you want to… sacrifice… so much of yourself like that for him, too?”

“No.” Dick frowns. Sacrifice? Is that how Bruce views it? But it’s his duty, Bruce took him in for a _reason_ — “No, but I do love him. I do, Bruce. I know you don’t believe me, and you don’t want me to, but I do.”

Bruce stares at him. He looks like he’s aged a million years in the span of a moment. He nods slowly. “I suppose I lost, then.” He averts his eyes, plays with the ring on his finger; his mother’s. “There have been letters. And calls. I intercepted them. I thought I was acting in your best interests, and… I was wrong. I _have_ been wrong.”

The feeling that sweeps over Dick as he processes the words isn’t anger— it’s a terrifying calm. It’s clarity, returned. “…I’m leaving, Bruce,” he can hear himself say. “My bags are packed, and I’m leaving. I don’t mean for Harvard.”

Bruce’s hand trembles ever so slightly. “For a boy?”

“Yes.” Dick nods, standing. “This boy.”

Bruce’s eyes shoot up. And fall again, resignation in them. “When?”

“Tomorrow.” His mind hasn’t been so clear in _days_. “And I’d really like it to be on good terms, so I can come visit. Come see Tim and Cass and Alfred again. Watch my Damian grow up. Maybe hang out with my best friends and have it not be awkward.” He smiles, bittersweet. “So I can come see _you_ again, too. …I’ll miss you, you know. I really will.”

Bruce releases a slow, quivering breath. “Dick— whatever I did, or didn’t do— it was never out of malice.”

“I know.”

“You were just… growing up, growing independent, I— I suppose I was… panicking…”

“I know.”

“I never meant to take your childhood from you.”

“I know, Bruce.” Dick steps forward and hugs him. “I know. I love you, too.”

* * *

“Dick Grayson?”

Dick turns slightly. The foyer he’s standing in is paved with white-and-gold marble, and the reception desk just ahead is pure ebony, too. The elevator is see-through glass, and Dick takes some satisfaction in the fact that Oliver _hadn’t_ had a foot to stand on while criticising the villa, after all. He’s looking for the owner of the voice in the sparse crowd, and eventually finds himself face-to-face with a young, black man giving him a tentative smile.

“Dick Grayson, right?” He asks.

Dick nods, smiling back, surprised. “I’m sorry, do I know…?”

“Connor Hawke. Uh, Ollie’s son.” Connor Hawke holds out a hand. “I thought it was you.”

Dick takes it, intrigued. Apparently the ability to make one feel vaguely judged runs in the family; Connor is giving him a surreptitious once-over, although he seems more curious than anything else. “Did you want to come up?” Connor gestures the word _up_ with a finger.

“Oh, I—” Dick tucks a strand of his hair behind one ear. “I’m not really here to see Ollie, per se, I— was just wondering if… maybe Roy had stopped by, recently, or if Ollie would have any idea where he’d—”

“Right. So you want to come up?” Connor’s still smiling.

“Um, is Roy—”

Connor nods. “He’s here. Well, he and Dad stepped out to get dinner a while ago— Mia burned the roast, long story— but you’re welcome to wait.”

“He’s… here?” Dick’s heart is racing. He hadn’t been expecting to see him again so soon, it’s like a wave crashing against his chest.

Connor laughs, an amiable sound. “Yeah, we’re just as surprised as you are, trust me.”

Dick tries to ignore his pounding heart. “I would. Like to go up. Yes.”

There’s a knowing light in Connor’s eyes. “Sure, come with me.”

And one elevator ride later, they’re stepping out across a hallway into a spacious penthouse. The décor is tasteful and modern, the walls a soft shade of green. A giant painting of Errol Flynn as Robin Hood is, for some reason, hanging above one of those new electric fireplaces in what Dick presumes is the living room, and the apartment smells vaguely like chicken-flavoured smoke.

“Mi, I’m back,” Connor calls.

“With food or food-less?” a girlish voice shouts back from a room somewhere further inside, and then there are footsteps approaching, materialising into a pretty blonde teenager about a head or so shorter than Dick. Her hoop earrings swing with every toss of her head, and she puts one hand on her cocked hip, just above a studded belt and a pair of white shorts, as she pauses at the sight of Dick, leans against the doorway, and gives him the trademark Queen-family look of appraisal he’s, by now, used to.

“Sorry,” Connor is saying with a shrug, “Food-less.”

“Traitors are not allowed beyond this door.” Mia draws an imaginary boundary with her foot on the carpet. But her eyes find Dick again, and she smiles, excited. “Is this him?”

Connor sighs. “Mia—”

“No, you’re Dick Grayson, right?” Mia blatantly points straight at him. It’s kind of refreshing to meet an heiress minus the airs, Dick thinks, amused.

“Hi.”

“Gosh.” Now she sounds her age, even if she clearly dresses to not look it. “Roy will be back in a jiffy. Here, sit down.”

Dick does, feeling strangely self-conscious. “Did Roy tell you about…?”

“Oh, no.” Mia laughs like just the thought of it is ridiculous. “Ollie did. Said Roy met a Dick Grayson who’s got his head all turned around, and that’s why he’s been acting so weird.”

“Weird?”

“Mia, come on.” Connor’s laughing under his breath, indulgent.

“I’m not being rude,” she says confidently, and throws herself down on the couch next to Dick (with a long-suffering sigh, Connor joins them, perching on one of the arms). “Yeah, weird— like, the other day he said to me— _Mia, I’m really lucky to have you as my sister_.” Dick can’t see what’s meant to be so strange about this, blinking in confusion, but Mia swats at Connor with her eyes shining as if she’s recollecting some mind-blowing event. “Right, Con? Happened to you too, right? Christ, I thought he was dying or something.”

Connor seems hesitant to agree, but he does nod, if somewhat sheepishly. “I also saw him wearing that jacket Dad bought him for his twentieth birthday, do you remember? He _never_ lets Dad buy him anything.”

“And he’s _always_ around for breakfast now. Like, I still get a scare when I open the fridge back at ours and hear _Morning_.”

“Yeah, he hasn’t been away from home at all since coming back.”

“So, come on, what did you do?” Mia leans forward, giving Dick an eager smile.

Dick flushes. “O-oh, I— nothing.” He smiles down at his lap. “Honestly, Roy’s done more to change me.”

“I mean, I could see that, Mr. Dressed-to-Impress.” Mia laughs. “But Ollie figures something happened to brother dearest somewhere between meeting you and realising his family _doesn’t_ suck all that hard, actually.”

“What Mia means,” Connor cuts in, chuckling softly, “Is that Roy rarely opens up to anyone— not even us, so it’s reassuring to hear that he could have let someone get that close.”

They’re interrupted by the _ding_ of the elevator doors sliding open, then, and footsteps down the hall. Dick’s heart stops. The voices outside are raised, but there’s nothing threatening in them— in fact, they sound more fond than anything, like a friendly debate is happening.

“—So _your_ generation spat on everything _my_ generation fought for, going and voting conservative all the damn time—”

“ _Excuse you_ , your generation was only _partly_ marching with MLK and throwing bricks at homophobic cops, the other half was, I don’t know, fucking— getting high at Woodstock or—”

And then Roy’s _there_ , just _there_ , standing at the door. Dick can’t find the strength to stand, can do nothing but answer Roy’s shocked look, and his hands dropping the bag he’d been holding on to the carpet without even apparently realising it, with wet eyes and a trembling smile.

“ _Dick._ ” Roy surges forward, and then he’s on his knees, hugging Dick so tightly Dick can’t breathe, doesn’t really want to. “Tell me I’m not dreaming…”

“No,” Dick whispers back, fighting not to cry as he hugs back. “God, I missed you, I _missed_ you…”

Distantly, he can hear Oliver’s voice saying, “Alright, come on, give them some privacy,” and the sound of footsteps shuffling out of the room, but he has his eyes closed and his head buried in the crook where Roy’s neck meets his shoulder, and Roy is his whole world right now. He doesn’t dare open them even as Roy pulls back and a gentle hand wipes away his tears, afraid to let the moment end.

He can feel Roy’s forehead press against his. “I sent you letters,” he said. “And I tried to call, but I kept getting them back and the calls never went through. I figured Bruce must’ve been—” he pauses, watching with something like wonder in his eyes as Dick opens his and smiles softly. “…What?”

“You didn’t assume I was ignoring you,” Dick explains, tender. “You believed in me. Finally.”

Roy goes red right down to his neck, almost matching his hair. Dick half-laughs, half-sobs. “Yeah, I. I figured Bruce was sabotaging me, so I was saving up, thought I’d find you in Boston.” Roy laughs, too, softly, under his breath. “Never even _dreamed_ you’d come find me instead— what happened, how’d you get here?”

Now Dick’s laugh is sheepish, nervous. “What was the phrase you used— uh, functionally homeless?”

Roy stares at him. Then barks out his startled amusement. “Aw, Dickie. What’d you do?”

“I left.” Dick traces Roy’s cheek, still amazed that he gets to. “I just left. I was dying, without you.”

Roy reaches for his hips. “You lost weight. You weren’t making yourself sick over me, were you?” He takes Dick’s hand and kisses it gently.

“Secret for a secret?”

Roy smiles up at him. “This is the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life.”

Dick kisses him on the forehead. “The truth is, I’m here to take you in.”

“Oh?”

“For theft.”

“It was _one_ pack of cigarettes, Dick, he’ll manage.”

Dick shakes his head. “Not that.” He tugs at Roy’s hand, places it flat on his chest, above his heart. “This.”

“…Oh.”

Dick nods. “Life sentence.”

Roy finally kisses him, chaste and sweet. “I’ll be sure to do my time faithfully, then, officer.”

* * *

“So what now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll find the circus again.”

“Because I did discover one, though, a cottage like that one, and we can paint it blue and put up a Van Gogh.”

“Since when did your dreams involve picket fences?”

“…Since when did yours involve blowing with the wind?”

“We’ve established that you’re a bad influence.”

“I guess you are, too.”

“Roy?”

“Hmm?”

“…Stay with me, no matter what.”

“Oh, Pretty Bird. You don’t have to ask.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s finally fucking finished, ugh. I didn’t work hard on this fic, this fic worked hard on me. That lyric Roy wrote is COPYRIGHT YOURS TRULY. Not that anyone would bother stealing it, but just in case, LOL.
> 
> I am aware that that up there is one of, if not the most, tasteful names for a gay bar ever, yes. Please blame my easily-embarrassed nature ~~and don’t revoke my LGBT card~~.
> 
> I have one more DickRoy fic in my system that’s going to be canon compliant (what do you mean DC has more than one canon and DickRoy doesn’t exist in the other? You’re crazy!) and about three chapters long I think, and then the DickRoy well will have run completely dry. Sorry. If you want more DickRoy from me, you can always send in requests to my Tumblr, anelderling, and I’ll do what I can to whip up something small for you lovelies. Any excuse to keep this ship alive.
> 
> Please take the time to leave kudos, bookmark, and share your thoughts. As always, fanart, fanfiction-fanfiction, remixes, etc. of this are welcome, just don’t forget to share them with me as well. Until next time!


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